


The Haunting of Craig Tucker

by sammythemattressthief



Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Complete, Ghost Sex, M/M, Mild Gore, MysteriousEntity!Kenny, Mystery, Pantry Ghost, Paranormal, Strange Happenings with Gold and Silver, Supernatural Elements, Thriller, Witch!Craig, astral projection sex, but not, halloween fic, it's sort of like, mild violence, the writer taking liberties with magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 02:17:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21263465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammythemattressthief/pseuds/sammythemattressthief
Summary: “Park County Paranormal Emergency Hotline, what is your emergency?” a bored female voice asked.“Yeah, I’ve got a ghost in my pantry,” he said, sounding equally bored.“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but we don’t handle new hauntings. We provide emergency services for generational inhabitants and the specters of attached siblings. We would recommend you hire an ex — ”Craig hung up on her.--Craig wakes up one morning after a failed ouija session to find a ghost in his pantry. But he can touch this ghost, so maybe Kenny isn't a ghost after all. As he tries to figure out exactly what Kenny is, he finds himself falling in lust and more with his strange pantry not-ghost, questioning everything he knows about his paranormal existence, and coming face to face with creatures not seen for over six hundred years.





	The Haunting of Craig Tucker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissKiwi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissKiwi/gifts).

> Dedicated to Kiwi, who put up with my whining about this fic for a month. Bless ur soul, my child. 
> 
> Put [this short album](https://brandonboone.bandcamp.com/album/from-hell-you-must-entertain-heaven) on repeat while you read - it fueled my writing process, especially the final track, Returning Home.
> 
> It's only 10:43 PM on October 31st where I am so this totally still counts as a Halloween fic.

When Craig awoke, it was to his familiar pawing at his face. His first thought was that he really needed to trim Stripe’s nails, and he told him so without opening his eyes. A flash of cold air bloomed to the side of his face, and then there was a gentler, larger paw batting at his face. Craig cracked one green eye open to glare at his familiar, who had taken the form of a sleek black cat and was squinting at him. 

“You can’t avoid a nail trim forever. You hate being a cat,” Craig drawled. Stripe narrowed his eyes further, and then shifted once more, his body collapsing and elongating into a modest, six foot long python. “Asshole.” He blinked once or twice and wondered if he’d been crying in his sleep from some forgotten nightmare — his eyes were crusted over a bit, and he could feel the dried tear tracks on his face.

He sat up and scanned the room. The candles had been blown out and dawn was creeping over the horizon line when he looked out the window. The ouija board was face down on the rug and the planchette was balanced on it, standing straight up with the point down, off to one side. The cup of donated blood had been spilled over, soaking the rug and narrowly avoiding ruining the hundred and twenty year old spirit board. He quickly moved it out of the way, really not wanting to hear his mother bitching at him if he ruined the one valuable thing that had been passed on in his family. The planchette, however, didn’t topple. Frowning, Craig picked it up and placed his finger where it was, then flipped the board over. It was pointing to the letter ‘C’. This could have been a spirit calling his name, or a spirit calling him a cunt. Both had happened before, so he dismissed it. He wasn’t trying to summon a spirit, per se, anyway. 

Terrance Mephesto had pissed him off for the last time, and Craig thought it fitting to see if he could bribe Mephistopheles into dragging Terrance into Hell, or at the very least, souring all the milk in his house and plucking the flight feathers from his stupid, five-assed parrot. He thought that maybe the similarities in their names would strike a cord in the ancient demon, but now he had no idea whether the communion worked or not. He wasn’t even  _ summoning _ , how had he fucked this up so badly? Sighing, he picked up the board and planchette and set them on his bed. He wandered into his bathroom and pumped some pumpkin scented hand soap into his palm, then smeared it across the spilled blood on his rug. He waved his hand once and the blood vanished. Satisfied, he picked Stripe up and set him about his shoulders.

“It’s kind of cold in the house for a snake, don’t you think?” he asked, feeling the chill of his scales against the nape of his neck. A forked tongue flickered across his ear, and then there was another burst of cold air. He turned his gaze to find a stoat blinking up at him with beady little eyes. His fur was beginning its transition to snowy white, and Craig reached up and scratched his head. “This one’s cute. You been watching NatGeo again?” Stripe chirped proudly in response. “Do stoats like berries? I’m hungry.” 

They made their way downstairs, and Craig waved a hand to turn his kitchen lights on. His cottage was an ancient one, built by his ancestors when they’d first settled in Colorado. There wasn’t actually any electricity, but being a witch, it didn’t really matter. He could just hang some light bulbs wherever he wanted light and wave a hand. Terribly convenient, and it preserved what hadn’t been uprooted when plumbing had been added in the nineteen forties. His kitchen and the upstairs bathroom were the only rooms in the house that were modern; the rest had remained much the same, preserved by powerful legacy spells that would continue to work as long as he, or his children, or his sister’s kids, inhabited the house. And since Tricia’s kids were two and four, they wouldn’t be booting him out any time soon. Also, optional immortality had its perks. And he liked this place, so he didn’t plan on passing it on any time in the near or far flung future. 

He leaned down so that Stripe could hop onto the counter, and then he dug through his fridge for some blackberries from the bushes out back. They were from August, but his enchanted refrigerator had been a stroke of genius on his part. The spellwork had been tricky to figure, and he’d blown up seven old refrigerators that he’d found in the junkyard before he managed to get it to work. Nothing stored within would rot, enabling him to store all sorts of food indefinitely. Initially he’d also stored his rarer ingredients in it, along with some dismembered animal parts, but then his food had started screaming every time he bit into something, so now he kept them in a second enchanted refrigerator in the cellar. 

He dumped the blackberries into a bowl and set them on the counter for Stripe, but his familiar was staring at the pantry doors with great intensity. They were closed, as they had been the night before when Craig had gone looking for a snack before beginning the seance. Losing interest in the doors, Stripe buried his face in the bowl, smearing blackberry juice all over his face. Craig opted for cereal, and he opened the pantry doors. 

He could hear Stripe munching on the seeds of the berries behind him, probably looking like he'd been expecting to see a ghost hovering in front of the canned food. Craig, however, wasn't expecting that, and he frowned severely. The ghost was flickering wanly in and out of existence, his head slumped forward and not moving at all. His colours were washed out and grey-tinted, but Craig saw that he wore modern clothes - an orange hoodie and ripped up jeans. He had pale hair that could have been blond or brown, and it floated ethereally about his head, like he was under water. 

"Well, shit," Craig sighed. He reached forward and confirmed it was actually a ghost by sticking his hand right through him and procuring a box of Fruit Loops. He pulled the box through the ghost, who shuddered a little but didn't otherwise move. He fished in his pocket for his cell phone and dialed 6-6-7. It rang one and a half times before someone picked up.

“Park County Paranormal Emergency Hotline, what is your emergency?” a bored female voice asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got a ghost in my pantry,” he said, sounding equally bored. 

“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t handle ghost infestations,” she told him. Craig huffed.

“It’s hardly an infestation, it’s just one ghost,” he said. The woman on the other end sighed.

“Is it a generational inheritance or a new occurrence?” 

“New. He’s not a family member or anything. He showed up this morning.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she repeated, “but we don’t handle new hauntings. We provide emergency services for generational inhabitants and the specters of attached siblings. We would recommend you hire an ex — ”

Craig hung up on her. 

He turned to pour himself a bowl of cereal, flicking through a web browser on his phone to call an exorcist. He really didn’t like the idea of having a holy warrior in his house - most religions didn’t particularly appreciate witches, though they tended to hold the undead in worse regard than anything else. The Necromancer’s Guild was constantly at odds with the Catholic-Protestant Union, and Craig really didn’t miss the irony in that one. He eventually found a non-discriminatory exorcist based in Denver, and he hoped they’d be willing to travel to Park County, which was a little over an hour away. 

“Seventh Circle Exorcisms, Elizabeth Gold speaking, how may I help you?” a cheerful voice answered. 

“Yeah, I’ve got a ghost in my pantry,” he said.

“Oh my,” she said. He heard her typing at a keyboard. “And do you know what kind of ghost it is? A poltergeist? A vengeful spirit? A demon?” 

“It’s just a boring pantry ghost. He’s moved a little, but he’s not doing anything,” Craig told her. The ghost had slumped to the floor, legs akimbo, and he was breathing shallowly. The woman on the phone hummed.

“Is he throwing objects from the pantry, or causing destruction of property within?” 

“No, he’s just sitting there.”

“Has he harmed you or any other entity within your house?” 

“No, I found him this morning.” He conveniently left out the part where he’d been trying to talk to a demon. 

“Then I’m afraid the exorcists here can’t help you, sir,” she said sadly. 

“Why the hell not?”

“We deal with strictly malevolent spirit infestations, or with previously benign spirits that have metastasized into harmful ones,” she told him.

“It’s a pantry ghost, not a fucking tumour,” he snapped. The woman sighed. 

“Regardless, your ghost is not something that we deal with. Perhaps try an exterminator? I can give you the number to a good one here in Denver.”

“It’s fine, my friend works for one just up the street. Thanks.” He poked the ‘end call’ button on his screen viciously, throwing his phone down onto the counter. Stripe paused his chewing to glare at Craig as well as a stoat could, and then went back to his food. He looked down at the ghost in his pantry. He wasn’t really in the pantry anymore, having slid all the way down so that he was lying on his back with his head lolled off to the side, staring into the dusty corner of the pantry. He huffed irritably. 

“An  _ exterminator _ is who I need. Like he’s just a couple of ants instead of a ghost. In my pantry,” Craig said to Stripe. His familiar blinked up at him as he chewed. Craig snagged a berry and popped it into his mouth, ignoring the offended chittering. He picked up his phone, scrolling through his contacts until he came to Clyde’s name. His friend didn’t pick up until the very last ring. 

“Dude, do you have any idea what time it is?” Clyde asked, his voice groggy with sleep.

“There’s a ghost in my pantry, please come exterminate him.” 

Silence, and then a sigh. 

“Can you please elaborate?”

“I was trying to talk to an… otherworldly entity, and instead of talking to it, I passed out. When I woke up, there was a ghost in my pantry.” He looked down at the ghost. He thought it looked a little more solid than before. “He’s laying on the floor now, kind of like you do when you and Bebe fight.”

“That’s my spot, he can’t have it.”

“I doubt he’s fighting with his girlfriend. Come over here and exterminate him.”

“Dude, it’s five in the morning. I don’t even go into work until nine, I don’t have any equipment with me.”

“Fine, come over after you get to work.”

“I can’t, dude, I have a job at the forest well again first thing this morning,” Clyde whined. Craig rolled his eyes. That stupid well was always becoming infested with ghosts, and if the mayor would just let him enchant it, that would solve the town’s problems with it. “But, my afternoon is free. I can stop over around one?” Craig frowned.

“Fine,” he said.

“Don’t whine, dude, just cage him and go take a nap or something. Brew some shit, ride a broom and eat children.” Craig could hear the grin in Clyde’s voice and he couldn’t help the smirk that grew across his own face. 

“Don’t you have a forest to protect and some miners to seduce? I’ll see you at one.” Before Clyde could defend his hulder lineage, Craig hung up on him. He stepped over the ghost, instinct and his history of stepping on Stripe causing him to step over anything on the floor regardless of its solidity. He withdrew the milk from the fridge and poured some into his cereal. He began eating, engaging in a staring contest with Stripe, occasionally feeding him a Fruit Loop, but only the green ones. 

“Please don’t exterminate me.”

Craig’s eyes widened, and Stripe turned around and hissed at the ghost on the floor. He was solid now, though he looked like he’d smacked into a dusty wall. His hair still floated about his head, which was now tilted to the side to look at Craig, blinking up at him with pale blue eyes. Craig set his spoon back down in his bowl, then narrowed his eyes at the ghost.

“Why not?” he asked. The ghost furrowed his brow. 

“Uh, ‘cause I’m not here to hurt you?” Craig rolled his eyes.

“Obviously.” He sincerely doubted the ghost could hurt him even if he tried. Not that Craig was one to boast, but he was a fairly accomplished witch with no small measure of innate talent and years of study under his belt. He could handle a confused ghost.

“I mean, I don’t even know where I am, or how I got here. I literally just woke up in your pantry,” the ghost said, giving a little shrug of his shoulders. Craig resumed eating his cereal, choosing to ignore the ghost who was currently wiggling around on his kitchen floor, moving his limbs experimentally. By the time Craig had finished his breakfast, the ghost was standing. Well, hovering, as they do. 

“What’s your name?” Craig asked, rinsing his bowl in the sink.

“Kenny,” the ghost said. “And I know I’m dead, but… nothing else.” He looked at the floor a little forlornly. This wasn’t uncommon for ghosts. Oftentimes they’d die and not know how they came to lose their life card or remember anything about themselves. It usually occurred in particularly grisly cases of death, typically involving dismemberment. Sometimes it was just the Necromancers getting a little rowdy again. He picked up the box of Fruit Loops to put it back in the pantry.

“That sucks. Now get out -” He tried to shove the box of cereal back through the ghost’s chest, but instead he just ended up pushing the ghost back into his pantry. The box collided with his chest and the thin cardboard crumpled a little; the ghost stumbled a bit, looking just as shocked as Craig. “Huh.  _ That’s _ different.”

“Is it?” the ghost asked, pushing himself to rights again. Craig reached around him and put the box back in the pantry. 

“Yeah. Ghosts are supposed to be immaterial.” He poked the ghost in the shoulder. He definitely made physical contact, but it wasn’t like touching a person. He was cool and his fingers sunk in, almost like mud or a sponge. He pressed a little harder and his finger seemed to be absorbed by the ghost’s arm, and it absolutely felt like mud now. “Does that hurt?” 

“No,” the ghost said, shaking his head. “Kinda feels like a fly or a gnat landing on me, but it doesn’t hurt.” Craig hummed, withdrawing his finger and taking the fabric of the sweatshirt to inspect. He tugged and rubbed at it, bending forward to get a closer look. It felt solid and real enough, but he could poke his finger right through it if he pressed hard enough. The fabric didn’t tear, nor could he wipe off the pale sheen over it that seemed like he’d walked through a cloud of drywall dust. 

“And you’re sure you’re dead?” 

“Pretty sure? I remember a bright light, I think - is that a thing dying people actually see?” Craig shrugged.

“Sometimes, but it’s mostly just darkness. Every ghost I know can remember how they died, and they can’t be touched. My magic can affect them, and a Gorgon can turn them to stone, but people can't touch them." The ghost looked put out. Distressed, even. "There are ghosts who don't remember how they died, I just don't know any." He didn't mention that his death had probably been particularly gruesome if he didn't recall anything at all. 

"But you can touch me, which means I'm not really dead?" the ghost asked. 

"I honestly don't know. I know a guy, though. I can send you to him," Craig offered. The ghost wrung his hands, and for some reason, it struck Craig as an out of place gesture. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it seemed like such an uncharacteristic gesture for him, ghost or not. Which was absurd, of course, because he didn't know anything about the guy except for his name. Which was Kenny, he thought, not 'the ghost'. Mama may have raised an asshole, but she didn't raise a disrespectful witch. 

"Please come with me," Kenny asked, his voice soft. "I don't know anything about anything, I can't even remember who I was or how I died. What if your friend Ghostbusts me and sticks me in a tube in his basement?"

"You sound like Tweek," Craig said, rolling his eyes fondly. He also noted that Kenny knew about Ghostbusters, enough to make an accurate reference about the film. "I'll come with you."

The relief that washed over Kenny's pallid face was palpable in the room, rolling over Craig in warm waves that were more like thick blankets than water. He felt protected and safe, like Kenny's relief was a barrier against the rest of the world. That was as weird as the feelings he had about the hand wringing. 

"The lab doesn't open until ten, though. Can I run a few tests? If I go in without any basic answers, Kyle will kill me,” he said. Kenny shrugged.

“It’s better than being exterminated, or caged in your cellar. Will they hurt?” 

“No, they’re simple.”

“Okay.”

With Kenny’s consent, Craig motioned for him to follow. He led his new houseguest into the cottage’s study. It was a mid-sized room with wide, curtained windows. He drew them back to let the morning sun shine on his plants, and the rest of the room was illuminated in turn. Tall bookshelves lined one wall, double stacked with books that were a combination of ancient and new. An old wooden desk sat against the opposite wall, a scrying stone in a pedestal and an assortment of dried out herbs and tufts of fur scattered across its surface. Papers, parchments, notebooks, and vials in varying stages of fullness were in haphazard piles on it, and one of the bottom drawers had been left open. The old wooden floor was bare and stained nearly black from all manner of potions spilling on it, ingredients being ground into it, and spells bouncing off of it. The room is cozy, even more so when the candles are lit and he’s working late into the night, but with so much sun peeking across the horizon line, he doesn’t need the extra light. 

Kenny floated in behind him, taking in everything with wide, pale eyes.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a witch’s study before. Or maybe I have and I just really don’t remember it,” he sighed. “This sucks.” Craig felt a pang of empathy for him. He couldn’t imagine losing every memory but his name.

“I know,” he said, though he really didn’t. He withdrew a few old divining rods from a drawer at the desk. Kenny floated over and peered at them curiously. “These are made of iron, silver, and gold.” He pointed to each rod in turn as he spoke. “I’m going to apply them to you, and you need to tell me if you feel it.” 

“Well, I felt it when you touched me,” Kenny offered with a shrug. Craig picked up the gold rod. 

“Did it hurt?” he asked, just for a reminder. 

“No, but your skin was really, really warm. Like you have a fever or something.” Craig frowned; his hands were always a little chilly.

“That may be because you’re a ghost, and ghosts are always cold. My body temperature runs a little on the low side, and my extremities are always cold by anyone else’s standards,” he said. Kenny’s face fell a little, and Craig felt that shock of empathy again. “But it’s good to note. Your sense of touch seems… tightly bound, if that makes any sense.” He could go on and on about how each of the seven senses were like string or rope, and could be wound in varying degrees around a person’s soul, how they typically came almost entirely unraveled in death, and what it meant for a ghost to retain a tight bond. He didn’t want to bore his subject into a second death, though. 

Kenny seemed mollified by that answer, and he floated over to sit in a chair - well, to hover above the chair in a seated position. He looked down at his buttocks and frowned.

“Why am I repelling solid objects like a magnet?” he asked. Craig smiled.

“It takes a lot of focus for a ghost to be able to walk and sit as people do. Sometimes it’s entirely impossible for them, just because there are no requirements needing to be met. You don’t  _ need _ to sit, or walk, or even breathe.” Kenny looked mortified. “Go on, try holding your breath.”

Kenny took a deep breath and then held it. And held it, and held it, and held it. Then he held it some more. Craig raised one amused eyebrow at him.

“Oh my god,” Kenny said, awed. Then his face fell, horrified. “Oh my  _ god! _ ” he screeched, tearing at his hair. “I’m  _ dead! _ Is this permanent? Can I un-die? Am I going to wake up tomorrow, tucked back in bed after a nightmare?” Craig sighed.

“Well, the only way to bring you back would be if you knew where your body was, and if you died of unnatural causes. You know, like, before you time,” he said. “The churches frown on it, but the Necromancers will think you’re their best friend.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Witches are cooler,” Craig answered with a nonchalant shrug and a small smirk. Kenny relaxed, and Craig nodded to himself, approaching the ghost with the gold divining rod. He touched the fingers of his own hand to his forearm, confirming that they were cool, before reaching out for the ghost’s wrist. He pushed the sleeve of the hoodie up and wrapped his whole hand around the thin wrist. “Does that feel warm to you?”

“Yeah,” Kenny nodded, “Really warm, like before.” 

“Can’t wait to tell Clyde that someone finally doesn’t think my hands are cold,” Craig mused. He lowered the gold rod to Kenny’s wrist and held it against the skin there. “Do you feel anything other than the sensation of being touched?”

“No, I - wait. It’s warm?” Kenny said, sounding confused. “Not like your kind of warm, that almost burned me. This is like… wrapping yourself in a blanket that just came out of the dryer kind of warm. Like mom’s hugs when you’re heartbroken.” Craig looked up at him, beginning to draw the wand away. Kenny grasped his wrist, his eyes pleading. “Leave it there just a little longer. Please.” Craig nodded, pressing the rod back against Kenny’s skin. “It’s like seeing your best friend unexpectedly, after years apart. It’s warm like a dog curling up at your side when you’re upset. It’s… it’s really incredible.” Kenny closed his eyes and let his head tip forward, seeming to get lost in memories that weren’t there. Craig felt like caressing Kenny’s wrist, wanting to comfort him, but he pushed that urge aside. Preposterous. 

When Kenny opened his eyes again, he looked about ready to cry, and he nodded for Craig to remove the golden divining rod from his skin. Next, Craig picked up the iron one. It always made him a little nervous handling pure iron, as his grandmother had scared him when he was a child with tales of how the mineral could harm witches. He came to realize that it was false, because at the core of things, witches were humans, even though they’d been ‘dipped in the magic pot’, as his grandfather told him, admonishing his wife for her tall tales. He still picked up pure iron with a little trepidation, and thought that he always would. He pressed the iron against Kenny’s wrist, in a different spot than where he’d placed the gold rod. “Anything?”

Kenny waited a moment, then closed his eyes and waited one moment more. He shook his head. “No, that one was just warm, like your hand. Boring,” he said, drawing the word out. 

“My hands aren’t boring,” Craig huffed. “They’re literally magical.” He flicked his fingers at Kenny, and a shower of multicoloured sparks burst over his head, fluttering through his floating hair. Kenny reached up, touching them. 

“Oh! These are fun!” he said happily. Craig raised an eyebrow at him. “I mean, like, they  _ feel _ fun. How do I put this into words… it’s like they’re giggling.” Kenny shrugged. “They’re not alive, but it’s like they’re enjoying their short spark of life anyway." He shook his head. "Weird, I know. You said ghosts can interact with your magic, right?"

"Yeah, but you're also a special case. I shouldn't be able to touch you with anything but my magic," Craig said truthfully. He set down the iron rod, grateful to not have to touch it anymore, superstitious fool that he was. He picked up the silver rod, holding it up and waiting for Kenny to agree. When the ghost nodded, he set the silver rod against Kenny's wrist, and waited. 

Several moments of silence passed, and then Kenny gasped, staring down at the silver rod against his wrist. "Oh my god," he murmured. 

"What is it?" Craig asked, curious. 

"I can hear it singing," Kenny whispered reverently. "In my head, I can hear it singing. It's so clear and soft." Kenny closed his eyes and looked like he was ready to melt. 

Craig's brain was trying to process things at a thousand miles an hour and none of it was making any sense. As far as he knew, there were no recorded cases of humans or any supernatural entities experiencing quite these things with these particular minerals. Iron should have either dispelled or burned him viciously. Silver would harm a werewolf. Blah blah blah, standard stuff. But gold evoking such feelings and silver singing? He'd never heard of it, wasn’t sure if it had ever been documented before. He made a note to text Kyle as soon as he could. He was jolted from his thoughts when Kenny’s cold fingers wrapped around his wrist and brought his hand down to cover the divining rod on his own skin. Without thinking, Craig reached with both hands and held Kenny’s wrist, staring down at their hands.

“Can you hear it?” Kenny whispered. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

The thought of telling him no made Craig want to rip his own hair out, but he shook his head anyway, confused. Kenny sighed, and released his hand.

“Well, you’re seriously missing out, because this is fantastic. I kind of just want to carry this around forever.” He took the divining rod from Craig’s hand and cradled it gently, his face a serene picture. Craig watched him, curious and surprisingly fond. He pulled his phone from his pocket and shot off two quick texts, one telling Clyde that he didn’t need to exterminate any ghost, and a second to let Kyle know that he’d be stopping by today with an unusual case that he might be interested in. When he tucked his phone back into his pocket, Kenny was humming along to the song only he could hear, his eyes closed and the divining rod clutched tight in his pallid hands. Craig reached out and brushed his fingertips against Kenny’s hands, causing the ghost to look up at him. 

“Can I test some magic on you? Kyle will probably have you hold more silver at the lab later. I wanted to see if you’d react adversely to it, but I wasn’t expecting this,” Craig said. Looking a little reluctant, Kenny set the silver divining rod down beside the gold one, giving it a fond caress. 

“Sure, why not. Magic me, wizard man,” he said with a grin. Craig pursed his lips, trying to figure out which spell he’d use. Kyle was really better suited for this than he was, being as focused on research as he was. He decided on an ice spell - everything Kenny had touched so far had felt warm to him, even the cold divining rods. Witch cast ice spells were typically around as cold as dry ice, so if he’d feel anything, it would be this. Coating his hand in a protective layer of magic, he summoned an ice spell and laid a hand on Kenny’s arm.

“Feel anything?” he asked. Kenny paused, considering. 

“It’s warm, and it tingles a little. Someone’s holding a vibrating massager to it or something,” he answered. Craig’s brows furrowed and he frowned. “Is that wrong?”

“Nothing’s really wrong, per se. It’s just that this is an ice spell; it should be cold enough that it would burn a person, and even ghosts can feel it. Your reaction is just one I’ve never encountered before, that’s all,” Craig explained, as gently as he could. Kenny frowned, biting at his lip, and Craig hated that for reasons he didn’t feel like thinking about.

“Why is everything about me so abnormal?” Kenny asked, sotto voce. 

Craig didn’t have an answer for him.

—

When Craig walked into the lab with Kenny trailing behind him, he really didn’t know what was going to happen. He’d told Kenny as much, and the ghost expressed his fears that he’d be unable to leave once Kyle figured out just how strange he was. Craig assuaged him, assuring that Kyle wasn’t the type to keep anyone against their wishes. He would probably be asked to stay for tests and questions and much prodding, but Kyle would never hold someone captive, ghost or otherwise. 

When Kyle greeted them, he looked apprehensive, like he didn’t quite believe what Craig had told him. He presented Kenny with his own set of divining rods, and Kenny took them happily, both the gold and silver at once this time. He clutched them tightly, and Craig watched as his countenance melted and relaxed as he began to experience the properties of the rods that only he could tune into. He described them to Kyle much as he’d described them to Craig, and Craig couldn’t help but sit and watch with a growing fondness. Everything about Kenny was innocent, it seemed. He’d cracked a few lewd jokes, but remained awestruck by the smallest things, like the sun rising higher in the sky and the sly way a cat dodged around cyclists and pedestrians alike. Always in the mundane things about life - he wasn’t blasted back in shock when he saw a selkie shed her skin by the river, or when a group of pixies fluttered by with teeny cups of coffee in their clawed hands. To these he paid barely a passing glance, far more interested in the way a willow’s boughs danced in the morning wind. 

He made his fair share of crude gestures and bawdy jokes, of course. Modern ones that alluded to him not being dead for all that long. Craig told him so, and explained that it was a good thing, since his death probably hadn't gone to a cold case yet. 

Craig watched the doubt fall away from Kyle with each test he performed. Kyle was an accomplished witch, talented and driven and one of the smartest people Craig knew. He researched paranormal physiology at the South Park Biochemistry Lab, and had made several discoveries, such as the fact that iron only harmed fairies of the Seelie and Unseelie courts if it was previously superheated into a liquid form. Raw iron did nothing to them, and he discovered that if he built tools from magic-forged iron rather than superheated iron, they didn't affect the fae folk at all. It was an incredible discovery, one that had put Kyle on the radar of many prominent paranormal scientists. He now had the funding and equipment to do whatever research he wished, and the facility was state of the art. 

After the divining rods, Kyle performed a numbing spell on Kenny's bare arm, and then prodded at it. 

"Can you feel that, or is it properly numb?" he asked.

"No, I can feel it. It's not numb at all," Kenny answered. Kyle frowned, pulling back. He held up a finger and it shimmered briefly before returning to normal. "Is that a scalpel?" Kenny asked. Kyle and Craig blinked at one another in surprise. 

"Can you see this?" Kyle asked, holding his finger up. Kenny shrugged. 

"Yeah. It looks like… like a scalpel finger puppet. Why, can you not see it?" he asked. 

“It’s magic; immaterial and ethereal. We can’t explain it and we can’t see it unless we’re using prosaic infrared sensors,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “What does it look like to you?” Kyle waved his hand, and a notepad and pen floated over to him, poised to take notes in mid-air. Kenny’s face looked more impassive than Craig had seen it so far, and he wanted to reach out and hug him; it surprised him, because Craig wasn’t a hugger. Only occasionally with his closest friends, and even then, nine times out of ten it was initiated by a blubbering Clyde. And yet there was something about Kenny that evoked feelings of protection - that he wanted to protect him, and that he felt protected  _ by _ him. It was strange and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it. 

“The scalpel is red, shimmering and shining like it’s covered in translucent oil,” Kenny said, his voice sounding subdued and sad. Craig kicked Kyle’s foot with his, giving him a pointed glare. 

“Don’t worry too much about it, Kenny,” Kyle said brightly, and Craig had to give him credit for not stumbling over his words. “Once I run the results of these tests through our databases, I’m sure we’ll have some reasonable results. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard about a similar gold reaction anyway,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. Kenny looked up, hopeful. 

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah; stranger things than this have happened, dude, don’t worry about it. South Park’s a pretty strange town, and you’re not the weirdest by far,” Kyle answered with a chuckle. He reached for Kenny’s arm. “I’m going to press my magic to your skin and you need to let me know if you feel anything, okay?” Kenny nodded his affirmation. 

Kyle nodded to himself, then pressed against the skin of Kenny’s arm with his finger. Craig watched Kenny’s face the entire time, looking for any signs of pain, but there were none. At Kyle’s sharp inhale, he looked down at Kenny’s arm and his eyes widened. The skin was slowly parting beneath his finger; no blood flowed out and Kenny didn’t make a peep of discomfort. All he did was tilt his head curiously as his skin flopped open like the sides of an unzippered coat. 

“You don’t feel that?” Craig asked, horrified and awed. 

“I feel the magic, but it’s not laughing like Craig’s sparks. It’s clinical and stern, like an old teacher,” he said. Craig might have laughed in any other situation, because how many times had he heard someone tell Kyle that his soul was a shriveled old man? “But it doesn’t hurt. I can see what it’s doing and I think it’s supposed to, but I don’t feel any pain.” 

Kyle released his hand and dispelled his magic. Kenny brought his free hand up and slipped the sliced folds of skin together, running his palm over it to press it into place. When his hand moved, the cut was completely gone and the skin looked like it hadn’t been touched. Kyle made a noise of deep interest, reaching forward and grabbing Kenny’s wrists again, bending down to get a closer look. 

“You might be the most interesting person I’ve ever met, Kenny,” Kyle said, tilting his head up to grin at Kenny. The ghost smiled wanly. 

“I don’t know if I like being interesting,” he said honestly. 

“There are worse things to be,” Kyle said, a reassuring rebuttal.

“Yeah, like Cartman,” Craig grumbled. At the mention of the Unseelie, Kyle scowled, his lip curling up in a snarl. 

“There’s a reason my door is made of old-world iron,” he huffed. Craig stood, reaching into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. 

“I’ll be back, gonna have a smoke,” he announced, more for Kenny’s benefit than for Kyle’s. The red-headed witch looked up anyway. 

“Those are bad for you, ya know,” he said with a smirk, knowing full well that something as prosaic as cigarettes couldn’t do a thing to a witch. Craig flipped him off, and with a meaningful look at Kenny, made his way outside. The biochem lab was located in the heart of South Park, a tall building with labs in the basement and in the first three floors, and offices for the rest of it. He stepped over to a cigarette receptacle and lit one by flicking the end of it, bringing the white stick up to his mouth and inhaling. The tar and nicotine couldn’t damage him, but it certainly did work to calm his nerves, which were a little frayed from the day’s events. It was only eleven in the morning and he had already done nothing he’d been planning to do and was neck deep in weird. He  _ should _ have been planning the summoning of Mephistopheles after communing with him last night. His troubles with the self proclaimed mad scientist seemed so far away now though, like they barely mattered. 

Kenny was far more interesting than Terrance had ever been, even at his most annoying. He could see magic, hear singing through silver, and wasn’t dispelled by any form of iron. He wouldn’t say it where Kenny could hear him, but he was a paranormal anomaly; he could tell by Kyle’s reactions that even he hadn’t seen anything like this before. It was unprecedented and never before documented. And he was curious. So wildly, insatiably curious. This was the unknown. In today’s world, even paranormal unknowns were relatively uncommon, so when one appeared in his pantry out of nowhere, he couldn’t help but grow excited about it. He was directly involved in something new and groundbreaking, and he needed to find answers. 

He ashed his cigarette in the receptacle and was about to head back inside when he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, a sure sign that he was being watched. Craig had been low-key paranoid for most of his life - no wacked out conspiracy theories like Tweek had, but he was a firm believer in surveillance. Over time, he’d generally learned when he was actually being watched versus when he only thought he was. At this moment, he was positive that there were eyes boring into him. 

He pulled out his cell phone to mindlessly scroll through his Facebook while he summoned his magic into a form of astral projection. He was suddenly standing with his back to himself, and he didn’t have to look down to know that he was shimmery and translucent and entirely invisible to anyone else. His projection looked around, seeing no one of note in the immediate vicinity. He walked down the street a bit, scanning the lines and groups of people as they went about their business. The people were typical for South Park: the occasional vampire, some he recognized as customers of his that came in for a monthly day-walking enchantment. A few fae-folk, a centaur, and a prosaic human were sitting at a cafe, sipping steaming drinks and chatting amicably. A pair of ghosts were wandering about their shop, preparing to open at noon. 

And then his eyes fell upon a woman standing at the mouth of an alley. She was dressed casually, with jeans tucked into tall black boots and a cream coloured sweater. She wore no jewelry and her hair was not done up in any particular way, falling in long blond waves about her shoulders. Her arms were crossed and her cold blue eyes were sharp and bright as she scanned the crowd. Craig thought for a moment that she looked right at his projection, but her eyes kept moving. She did, however, look directly at the biochem lab, her eyes immediately focusing on the second floor, where Kyle and Kenny were firmly ensconced in the middle of the building with no exterior facing windows. Regardless of this, her eyes trained on the second floor and didn’t move. 

Unnerved, Craig brought his projection back to his body and hurried back inside, hopefully away from that piercing stare. He did his best to press down his feelings of discontent as he climbed to the second floor, letting himself into the lab with the spell Kyle had taught him. Kyle was sitting at a computer, and Kenny was reclined on a table, hovering just above it, staring at the ceiling silently. He looked up when Craig approached, and a strange look passed over his face before he smiled. 

“Kyle’s running the results through the database now,” he said. 

“If Kenny’s results match with anything in the catalogue, which is literally the history of the arcane and paranormal, this will find it and we’ll have something to go off of,” Kyle said, speaking up from where he was typing rapidly. “A few of the results sounded really familiar, so something should pop up soon.” 

“What if I’m like, some sort of super special ghost? What if I can shoot lasers out of my eyes?” Kenny asked, sounding happy with the impending results. 

“Craig can actually do that,” Kyle piped up, swiveling in his chair with a grin. Kenny’s eyes widened.

“No shit, really?” he asked.

“It’s a great party trick,” Kyle said. Craig groaned.

“It is  _ not _ . I blew up a whole keg of spiced dwarven mead last time I did that. It’s a terrible party trick,” he said.

“Okay, well, I want a party to celebrate my existence and you two are my only friends. I demand ghost tasty cakes and the laser eye trick. You can shoot through me, it'll be great," Kenny prattled. 

"You probably could shoot those lasers right through him," Kyle said. He paused, looking at his computer, which had beeped a soft tone at him. He furrowed his brow. "Or, uh, maybe not," he amended. Both Kenny and Craig turned to look at him, and Craig noted a worried, unhappy look on Kenny’s face. 

“What is it?” Kenny asked, his voice mild and subdued. Kyle rubbed at his chin, a habit Craig recognized from their childhood that he indulged in when he was confused by something. He didn’t answer immediately, clicking through a few screens of data and scanning each of them for a moment.

“Well,” he sighed, “the good news is you’re not dead - you’re not a ghost at all.” 

Oh. That’s… not what Craig had been expecting to hear. Kenny fidgeted, his hands tucked up into the sleeves of his hoodie. 

“And the bad news is you don’t know what I am,” he finished, sounding forlorn and more lost than he had that morning. Kyle looked apologetic, unable to meet Kenny’s gaze. 

“Your specific combination of results came up with  _ nothing _ in the International Paranormal and Supernatural Database. Even individually, your reactions to gold and silver are completely unheard of,” he said. Craig could tell that he was trying his best to not sound excited over all of this. As frustrating as it was, it was simply a new challenge for Kyle, and he thrived best when confronted with a wall to tear down. “But I’m going to do my best to figure things out for you,” he said reassuringly. “Aside from needing to know in the name of science, there’s just something about you. I can’t explain it,” he said, shaking his head at Kenny’s bewildered look, “but being near you makes me feel like you deserve the answers you’re looking for. It’s like a compulsion, but a good, willing one, if that makes any sense.” 

Somehow, Craig wasn’t surprised by Kyle’s confession. Science drove Kyle to admit this unusual feeling, because it was likely a product of whatever Kenny was. That probably attributed to the safe feeling Craig felt when standing by him - like there was a shell around them, shielding them from harm, and it was coming from Kenny. He felt protected and cared for and as strange as it was, Craig found himself wanting to sink into the feeling and return it. 

“I’ll let you go ho- uh, back to Craig’s for now. I still want to run a few more programs with the data I’ve collected. Can I just get a clipping of your hair? I’d like to analyze it,” Kyle said.

"Yeah, of course," Kenny said mechanically, hopping down from the table and frowning when his feet didn't hit the floor. He walked, his legs going through the motions, but there was no contact with the floor. He sighed and made his way over to Kyle, who produced a pair of scissors from a drawer. He tied off a small lock of Kenny's hair with a piece of thread and then snipped it from the back of his head. His entire head of hair still floated ethereally about his skull, and Craig could see Kyle resisting the urge to try and flatten it down. 

Kenny's face remained impassively miserable, which only tugged at that feeling Craig had to try and protect Kenny. Kyle told them that he would call them if he had any further questions, or if he discovered anything that couldn't wait. With an agreement to come back tomorrow, Craig led a silent Kenny from the lab with no more confidence than when he’d first brought him in. It was the middle of the afternoon now and the sun was high and bright in the sky. Craig watched Kenny from the corner of his eye as they made their way down the street; his colouring was still ashed over and dull, but there was something luminescent about him in the sun. Craig thought he could make out pale freckles on his cheeks and across his straight nose. His ears, when he could see them through his floating hair, weren’t pointed. Even if he hadn’t been hovering an inch off the ground, he was still taller than Craig, and Craig was the tallest witch in town. Craig wondered what Kenny could be. He didn’t appear to be any sort of dryad, nor was he a changeling. He supposed he could be some sort of freakishly tall domovoi, but that didn’t seem likely. With the way his hair floated about, he could be a sylph or a vila, though that didn’t explain his lack of reaction to iron. 

Craig watched him out of the corner of his eyes, trying to piece together Kenny’s puzzle. Kenny walked on beside him, looking like he was trying very hard to force his feet down to the ground. Suddenly fiercely sad for him, Craig called on his magic to levitate him an inch or two off the ground. He stopped moving forward and tugged on Kenny’s sleeve, his fingers sinking through it but still somehow holding on, like he was dipping his fingers through a wad of molding clay. Kenny paused and turned to look at him, confused and so sad looking that Craig felt his chest seize up. Somehow, for some reason, seeing Kenny sad was like someone had taken a knife to his chest and was twisting it around. 

Craig forced a little smirk and pointed down, where his own feet were now hovering a few inches above the ground. Levitation was something Craig had mastered when he was young, out of pure spite. Terrance Mephesto had been mocking him and his abilities, and while his friends told him to let it go, Craig couldn’t. Levitation was something that typically took a lot of skill to even produce once - true mastery of it takes years. But Craig’s family was old and steeped in ancient witchcraft, and he’d be damned if some new blood yuppie witch like Terrance fucking Mephesto was going to out-magic him. So he set himself to studying and practicing at every waking moment until he’d finally felt ready. The next time Terrance called him a two-bit magician, Craig rose into the air before him, feeling like a malevolent god of judgement, fully prepared to launch a fireball at him (because he’d been practicing those, too). One of their teachers, an elderly harpy, had retrieved him before he could do any damage, but the fact remained: Craig Tucker was could levitate at eight years old. No one in the whole town, not even Terrance and his stupid collection of multi-assed animals, could mock him ever again.

When Kenny saw that Craig was hovering at the same height he was, he looked up, his eyes wide and his mouth falling open. He smiled, wide and radiant, and Craig was a little blown back by how heart stoppingly gorgeous the man before him looked. He was effervescent and so stunning that Craig had to stop himself from gaping at him. He hadn’t let go of Kenny’s sleeve and he almost didn’t want to. His smile was so bright that Craig wasn’t sure if it was generating its own light or if the sun was simply bouncing off of him. It didn’t matter, as long as that smile was still there. 

“Now you’re not alone,” he offered, shrugging a little. Kenny beamed at him. 

“Aren’t I lucky?” he mused. Craig smirked, but released Kenny’s arm and gestured for them to keep moving. 

They made their way through town, intending on making their way back to the forested foot of the mountain where Craig’s cottage was. Kenny paused, though, before they had left the square, his eyes wide and focused on a shop across the street. Craig followed his gaze to see that he was staring at Svetlana’s Divinations, run by Svetlana’s daughter, an old Ukranian poludnica that had been living in South Park since before Craig’s grandmother had been born. Etched into the glass on the front window was a large, intricate looking ouija board, which was the object of Kenny’s weighty, surprised stare. 

“What is it?” Craig asked.

“I remember that,” Kenny whispered, awed.

“Svetlana’s?”

“No, a — your ouija board. I remember your ouija board!” Kenny turned to him excitedly. “It was an open channel, and I went toward it from wherever I was and whatever I’d been doing. I remember seeing you, and you were-” Kenny cut himself off, looking embarrassed. He cleared his throat. “You were talking to me, but I don’t think you knew it was me. There was something else there, but it saw me and left and I was — I followed the channel and I tried to-” He cut himself off with a little laugh, looking sheepish.

“Were you trying to spell my name?” Craig prompted, trying to draw Kenny’s memories out. “The board was upside down and the planchette was pointing through it to the letter C.” Kenny blinked at him, and then he laughed despite the embarrassment colouring his cheeks. Colouring being a generous term, considering how grey Kenny was.

“Oh my god, that’s right,” Kenny wheezed. “No, I was — I was trying to tell you that you’re cute.”

Craig blinked at him, completely caught off guard by Kenny’s confession. 

“Wait, are you — are you telling me that you shouldered an ancient demon out of the way to hit on me, and then got stuck in my pantry?” he asked, incredulous and flattered, but mostly just disbelieving. Kenny tilted his head, a smirk on his face. 

“I guess I did. If I have any say in my personality, I’d say that sounds like something I’d do,” he said, sounding endlessly pleased with himself. “Besides, Mephistopheles literally ran when he saw me. He sounds like a coward.” 

“Jesus christ,” Craig muttered, burying his face in one palm.

“Wow, that feels good to remember,” Kenny sighed, completely unfazed. “Like it’s just really good to finally remember why I’m here.”

“You’re not here because you think I’m cute!” Craig hissed, squinting at Kenny. 

“Sure I am,” he said with a grin bordering on salacious. “I don’t know what I was doing before then, but I saw an open channel with a bomb witch on the other end and I knew I had to be there.” Craig felt his face warming up as he glared at Kenny.

“So you’re telling me you’re stuck here with no memories of who you are because you—”

“Think you have really pretty eyes, yes,” Kenny said, his own eyes lidded and that sultry grin still in place. Craig crossed his arms.

“Then we can go back and tell Kyle that we’ve solved the mystery — you’re a lust starved incubus who can’t project worth a shit,” he deadpanned with a smirk. Kenny barked out a loud laugh, drawing the attention of several people around them. Rolling his eyes, Craig turned and floated off in the direction of his cottage, secretly pleased to pieces at this revelation. Not only was it good that Kenny had remembered something — because it proved that he could remember things — , but that it was directly involving  _ him _ . Kenny came to him from wherever he’d been, voluntarily and because he’d caught his attention. Craig would be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t absolutely tickled to death about it. Fortunately, he had no problem lying to himself, so he pointedly didn’t think about that. Craig felt Kenny following behind him, didn’t have to project to know that his pale eyes had already raked up and down his body. Flattery will get you everywhere, his sister liked to say. 

It got her married to a weird genius prodigy, but he wasn’t sure if that counted as an accomplishment. 

“Okay, you shallow floater, let’s get back to my place. I have an idea I want to try that might help you remember more,” he said, looking back over his shoulder.

“Are we going to walk through a cemetery? Look through an encyclopedia of supernatural creatures? Go to a parade?” Kenny prodded, moving up beside Craig once more.

“You’ll see.” 

The journey back to Craig’s was uneventful. The town’s cemetery was off in the distance, its trees eternally swaying in no wind at all, and they approached the forest at the foot of the mountain in short order. Craig’s cottage was tucked just beyond the initial treeline, in a small clearing kept neat with magic. As they approached his house, he could hear the chittering of a fox to one side, listening to it crash through the undergrowth. It was probably Stripe, because the vocalizations sounded irritated and very over it, and that was Stripe’s eternal state of being. Craig didn’t have to announce his presence — the familiar bond brought Stripe bounding over when he got closer, weaving around his legs before jumping up onto his shoulder. From his precarious perch on his shoulder, Stripe peered curiously at Kenny, sticking his head forward to sniff at him and scrunching up his face. Kenny looked amused.

“Well it’s not like I smell like grave dirt,” he told Stripe. “I’m not dead, take that.” If a fox could frown, Stripe did so then.

“I think it’s more like you have no scent at all,” Craig offered, and Stripe chirped, wiggling in confirmation. Kenny pouted.

“Better than BO,” he muttered, walking through the door Craig held open. “So what’s your grand plan?”

“We ouija Mephistopheles back here and question him.”

“You want to badger an age-old demon about where a not-ghost came from?”

“You literally shouldered him out of the way because you thought I was attractive.”

“Only partially true. He also said something along the lines of ‘oh fuck no’ and noped out like a priest was standing behind me, ready to smite him with his naughty-stick.”

“That might be true, if you really are a sex starved incubus.”

“I doubt I am. Have you seen me? I’m adorable. I don’t think I’d have trouble pulling.”

“Cocky much?”

“Confident, darling. Confident.”

Craig sighed deeply and rolled his eyes, dropping his levitation and jogging up the stairs to his room to fetch the ouija board that was still laying on his floor from last night. He gathered a few tapered candles and brought them all downstairs, where Kenny was encouraging Stripe, now in the form of a dire wolf, to gnaw on his arm. Craig repressed a fond smile and set the board up on his kitchen table, floating the candles and lighting them with a wave of his hand. The table was an excellent conductor for anything spiritual or magical, being made of black poisonwood over three hundred years ago. He ran his hand over the runes etched into the edge of the table lovingly and he briefly thought that, in a hundred years or so when the runes would need to be recharged, he hoped he would be talented enough to not disturb the centuries of legacy magic threaded into them. 

“Are you ready?” he asked, looking up to see Stripe sinking his fangs into Kenny’s leg curiously. His familiar released the not-ghost and took a few steps toward Craig before stopping. His nails were loud on the old wooden floor of the cottage, and he narrowed his eyes at Craig before shifting into a cat, retracting his claws and padding over to him daintily. Arching an eyebrow, Craig extended a hand in an invitation to his familiar. Stripe leapt up onto the table and settled near the spirit board, curling his tail around himself and fixing his stern gaze on the ‘Good-Bye’. 

Craig looked up, and extended his hand to Kenny. His previous good humour was gone and he looked somber and hesitant, but he placed his pale, cold hand in Craig’s and approached the table. 

“Put your hands on the planchette, and we can begin,” Craig said, though he guided Kenny’s hand and placed it on the old wooden planchette for him. Kenny brought his spare hand up and placed them there as well, and Craig did the same. “It’s going to be a little unconventional. Witches don’t really operate the same way prosaics do.” He shrugged a little at Kenny’s bemused look. “Some say it’s because we’re already damned, but we don’t have to jump through hoops to get something to talk to us.”

He closed his eyes, exhaled, and guided the planchette around the board seven times. 

“Mephistopheles, I’m speaking with you. I am Craig Cillian Tucker, nineteenth ascended witch of the banished clan Tucian and ninety sixth ascended of the Huallpa lineage. By these merits and my prestige as a fully realized witch of the North American Hemlock Coven, I call upon thee,” he said aloud, his voice strong and authoritative. “I ask that you speak through the planchette; the conduit is open.”

He could feel Kenny’s gaze on him, but when he opened his eyes he kept them fixed firmly on the planchette. It began to grow warm beneath his fingertips, nearly burning him, but he stayed his course. 

“Weren’t you the one trying to summon me last night?” a black symphony of voices asked. Kenny’s eyes widened and his eyebrows vanished behind his bangs. The voice of Mephistopheles was raw and damaged, like he’d spent the last millennia eating burning coals and drinking lava. It was several voices at once, each deeper and more shredded than the last, lending it an almost wet quality. 

“Not summon. I wanted to talk to you about summoning, see if you’d be okay with it. I’m not so bold as to assume I can just boss you around,” Craig answered. Mephistopheles snorted.

“You’d be the first. What do you want?” he asked. The room’s temperature dropped several degrees immediately. “You’re not fucking around with these wards, are you?” 

“No, I like this house and I want to keep it safe,” Craig said. As he stared down at the planchette, he noticed that it began to shimmer, and then the hazy, opaque image of a double serpent’s eye materialized in the center of the wood. It squinted and stared up at Craig.

“God, you’re just a baby,” Mephistopheles said. “You some sort of prodigy?” 

“No, I just studied hard at Hogwarts.”

“Don’t quit your day job, kid.” The eye swiveled to look over at Kenny, who looked horrified. “Oh, shit. Damnit, I’m leaving. I’m not getting involved in this.” 

“Don’t go anywhere just yet. We have questions for you about him,” Craig said sharply. Mephistopheles sighed, sounding very put upon. 

“What could I possibly know about some disembodied projection? I was in the conduit, making my way to you like a good demon, and then he was barrelling past me, shrieking about how his life was in danger and only a ‘fine piece of witch ass’ could save him,” the demon said, sounding bored. He squinted up at Craig. “You’re not even that good looking.”

“Your idea of attractive is probably a pukwudgie, I don’t want to hear your biased opinions about my face,” Craig snapped. Kenny leaned forward, bending over the planchette.

“You said I mentioned my life being in danger. What’s it in danger from? Was there anyone chasing me? Where did I come from?” he asked, his voice edging on high and desperate. The eye on the planchette rolled. 

“Where did you go, where did you come from Cotton Eyed Joe, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it, ha-ha,” Mephistopheles droned. “I’m not omniscient, kid. I was minding my own business when you all but knocked me down and ran past me. No one went crashing after you, and the conduit closed when you hit the middle realm. I hate navigating out of conduits,” he growled. Craig twitched, wondering who this demon had been palling around with to glean pop culture references from.

“Why are you so hell-bent on staying away from him?” Craig asked. The eye swiveled back to him. 

“He makes me uncomfortable,” Mephistopheles said begrudgingly. “He has no shadows, he is not touched by Lilith. Even in this… discarnate state, he is painful to look at.”

“What  _ am I _ ?” Kenny pleaded. Mephistopheles sighed, probably would have shrugged if he could manifest anything more than a see-through eyeball. 

“If I had to guess, a —” 

There was a rush of noise in his ears, and Craig took his hands from the planchette to cover them. Stripe hissed at the board, the fur on his back rising as he arched his tail into the air. 

“Wait! No!” Kenny cried, grasping at the planchette just as the eye winked out of existence. The noise in Craig’s ears stopped, deafeningly quickly, and he could feel a headache forming at the base of his skull. He scratched at his head, pressing a bit of magic beneath the skin to soothe it, and then looked up. The candles had blown out and it was dark outside. How long had the communion taken? Kenny was gripping the planchette, fury etched across his face, his pale hair floating wildly about him. Angry, Kenny tossed the planchette down on the board, where it immediately ziplined to ‘Good-Bye’. Kenny flipped it off.

“God  _ damnit _ ,” he swore, standing up and pacing. 

“We can try again later,” Craig said, keeping his voice soft. 

“I wish I could need air,” Kenny huffed, striding through the house and throwing the front door open, blowing out into the night like a storm. Craig frowned, frustrated for Kenny and angry with Mephistopheles for ditching them like that. He thought about opening the conduit back up by himself, but the more he stared at the spirit board, he decided against it. Mephistopheles was ancient and powerful, rumoured to be the right hand of the devil; nothing that a witch and a projection could have ever caused true harm to when he wasn’t even properly manifested. Craig waved his hand over the board, placing a basic ward spell on it before scratching Stripe behind the ear and following Kenny outside. 

He flicked his fingers toward the lanterns on either side of his front door, lighting them. He repeated the motion at the lamps along the old stone path leading up to his front door and they flickered to life, casting more light than a natural flame would. He scanned his clearing, but Kenny was nowhere to be found. He walked along the side of his house, passing the mostly bare plants in his garden, the leaves having fallen from most of the plants during the first frost a few weeks ago. Moonlight shone on him, unfiltered in the clearing, lighting his path and guiding him right to Kenny.

Craig wondered if this was what Kenny saw when he said that he can see magic. He glowed silver in the moonlight, his hair floating ethereally, hovering a bit higher than he usually did. His face was turned up toward the sky and his expression was a sad, resigned sort of melancholy. He was beautiful, and Craig was smitten. He approached Kenny from the side, not bothering to hide his presence. Kenny didn't look at him, though Craig felt like he was doing enough staring for both of them. 

"What if I'm stuck like this forever?" Kenny asked quietly. "Never knowing who or what I am, never remembering anything at all."

"You start over," Craig answered. He watched Kenny's eyebrows crinkle slightly. "You can stay here, and make new memories for yourself. You already have a whole day's worth — you build from that." From the way Kenny frowned, that wasn't what he wanted to hear. Craig couldn't blame him. 

"What if I have a family? Friends or coworkers? A lover mourning me?" he wondered bitterly. The thought caused a pang of  _ something _ to carve its way through Craig's chest.

"You go back to them, and they can fill you in. They'll know you, and you won't — you won't need this life anymore." He looked away from Kenny then, staring up at the moon. "You'll have your love back if you find them."

Kenny fell silent, his frown still in place, looking as frustrated and lost as he did that morning. He clenched and unclenched his jaw, picking at his cuticles until they’d be bleeding if he could. He sighed, burying his face in his hands briefly before pushing them up through his hair. It didn’t do much — the strands stayed flattened only momentarily before floating upwards to dance in the night air again. Kenny didn’t seem to notice, but he turned to look at Craig, a small smile twitching at the corner of his lips. 

“I kind of hope that doesn’t happen,” he said, sounding bittersweet. Craig’s eyebrows twitched, confused.

“Why not?”

“Because when I finally get around to kissing you, it’ll be weird to explain it to a lover I don’t even remember,” Kenny said, tilting his head as his smirk grew. Craig crossed his arms, raising one brow with a smirk of his own.

“What makes you think I’m going to let you kiss me?” he shot back. Kenny tucked his hands behind his head. 

“Just a feeling I’ve got.” He flopped back down onto the grass to stare up at the sky, its stars not hidden by light pollution this far from the town. “Besides, wouldn’t it just be a tragedy if I came all that way through a conduit, body checked a demon out of the way, just because I thought you were beautiful only to have you never, ever give me one little kiss? Should that come to pass, I’m sure ol’ Bill Shakespeare would rise from the grave to write another play about it.”

Chuckling to himself, Craig sat in the dewy, cold grass beside Kenny. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about this for long, though. We  _ are _ going to figure out who you are. My grandmother always told me, the best thing about magic is magic.” He held his hand out and conjured a flame into his palm. He twisted it into various shapes — a tree, a rabbit, a string of pearls. “There’s plenty left to figure out, but as far as missing persons and botched projections go? We’ll find something soon.” 

“And if you don’t?” Kenny prompted.

“I have some connections, some strings to pull and favours to call in,” Craig said with a shrug, dismissing the fire. Some of those connections were less than thrilled about owing him anything, but they’d cross those bridges when necessary. 

“And what if none of those pan out?” 

Craig turned to Kenny, who looked and sounded like he was edging into a panic attack. Something in Craig’s gut clenched and flipped, because for some reason he felt so strangely protective of this mystery of a man before him. The strange not-ghost who had appeared in his pantry, guarding the canned food and cereal and challenging everything he thought he knew about the world he’d grown up in. Thoughts of infuriating Terrance Mephesto had long since vacated his head; he hadn’t thought about work or the upcoming decennial meeting of his coven. He hadn’t thought of which clients would come in for charms in the next week, or who needed a monthly potion sent out to them. His only thoughts had been of Kenny, how he could help, what could he be doing differently for him. 

“Well,” he said slowly, chewing on his words before he spoke them, “then you stay here. It’s old as fuck but it’s quiet and peaceful back here. And we keep working on it. But you can make new memories in the meantime.” 

“You sure you wanna make memories with some… defunct incubus who can’t even hold silver without it serenading him?” Kenny asked, sounding bitter and far away. He tilted his head back up to stare at the sky, as if the moon and stars could give him an answer to every question he’d been asking himself. 

Craig refused to think about how things would be an hour from now. He refused to think about tomorrow morning, or the day after that. He didn’t think about how his life had been irrevocably changed when he opened his pantry for cereal after a failed communion to find a not-ghost in front of his Fruit Loops. He just leaned over, guided Kenny’s face towards his with one hand, and kissed him chastely on the lips. He kept his eyes open so that he could see Kenny’s reaction, and boy, was it worth it. His pale eyes widened impossibly, his eyebrows shooting up and vanishing behind his bangs. Kenny’s lips were cool, just like the rest of him; cool and dry and textured not unlike a soft sweatshirt. It was strange, even for him, and he'd fucked a kelpie, which were eternally clammy. 

Just as he was pulling back, Kenny made a small, disconsolate noise and grabbed the back of his head, holding him in place while he tilted his head and kissed back eagerly. His lips moved against Craig’s, full of life and a cold fire and when a cold, wet tongue touched against his lips, he found he wasn’t repulsed in the slightest. It wasn’t at all like any other cold, wet thing he’d ever touched. He opened his mouth and met Kenny’s tongue with his own, wrapping around it and massaging gently. Kenny moaned, bringing his free hand up to cradle Craig’s face. Craig smirked as well as he could into the kiss, sliding his own free hand around Kenny’s neck, and it was like dipping it into a cool pool of water. Despite the cold temperature and the strange texture, Kenny was a remarkably good kisser. He also seemed able to read a situation well, because he shifted onto his side, pulled Craig down onto the grass with him, and tangled their legs together as they kissed. 

Clyde always said he was easy. Craig liked to think of himself as sexually liberated. 

“I told you I’d get you to kiss me,” Kenny mumbled, threading cool fingers through Craig’s black hair. “Didn’t think it’d be this simple though.” 

“Yeah, I didn’t think I’d be making out with a pantry not-ghost tonight either, but stranger things have happened.”

—

The next day, Craig found himself on the phone with Kyle more than once. Scientifically speaking, there had been no breakthroughs. However, he’d discovered that Kenny’s hair was actually blond. He told Kenny as much while he was flipping through a book. He looked up and grinned at Craig, claiming that blonds did actually have more fun. His second conversation with Kyle happened later in the afternoon, just after Craig had finished bottling a few potions he’d brewed up. Kenny was still reading, and Craig put Kyle on speaker. 

“What’cha got for me now, Einstein?” Kenny asked. Kyle snorted.

“Einstein didn’t have shit on me,” he boasted. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I finished running the sample of your hair. I have no idea  _ what _ you are, but I think I know what happened to you.”

That got Craig’s attention. He set the vial of waterwalking down and moved closer to his phone. Kenny snapped his book shut and shuffled closer as well, looking anxious.

“Actually, you know what, do you mind if Stan and I stop over? I’d really rather do this in person,” Kyle said. Craig shrugged.

“Sure. I can renew his day-walking charm while he’s here and save him the trip tomorrow,” he offered. 

“Cool, we’ll be there in a minute.” The line went dead, and before Kenny could even question, there was a fizzle of magic in the air. Stripe, once again a stoat, looked up from his spot atop a bookshelf, only vaguely interested as a witch and a vampire materialized in Craig’s hallway. Used to Craig’s friends teleporting into the house, Stripe settled back down, closing his eyes and doing his level best to resume napping. 

Stan introduced himself to Kenny, stepping forward to shake his hand. Kenny blinked down at their hands, a puzzled look on his face before he looked back up at Kyle.

“He’s cold,” he said. Craig was surprised, but he honestly should have been expecting fuckery like this. Kenny was an entire enigma.

“A dry ice spell feels warm but Marsh is cold? What the fuck,” he muttered, not unkindly. Kyle rubbed his chin.

“No, that’s actually really interesting. Realistically speaking, vampires aren’t that cold. Cooler than most, but not icy to the touch. They’re technically undead, but they’re still alive.” Kyle reached out and grasped Stan’s arm, pressing his hands against the pale, bare skin there. “He’s about the same temperature he always is. Maybe whatever you are is something that typically runs very hot, like a werewolf or an ifrit. It’s something we can look into further.”

Kyle sat down on the couch and Stan wandered into the kitchen, presumably to help himself to a beer. They were all old enough friends that they didn’t need to stand on ceremony and tiptoe around niceties - Craig oftentimes made himself right at home in their apartment, and he expected them to do the same here. 

“So, you said you know what happened to me?” Kenny asked, his voice sounding smaller than it had all day. Craig resisted the urge to place a hand on his shoulder. Kyle smiled at Kenny, looking more self satisfied than reassuring.

“I believe I do, yes,” he said, readjusting his glasses. “We’ve been assuming you’re a botched projection of some kind, but that’s not exactly true. I think you were forcibly ejected from your body against your will.” Craig felt his body stiffen.

“Are you saying —” he began.

“Someone did this to him,” Kyle affirmed. Stan walked back into the room then, three beers in his hand. He handed one each to Craig and Kyle, keeping one for himself. He shot Kenny an apologetic look, but he wasn’t paying attention at all. Kyle took a drink, licking his lips before continuing. “My best guess is that you were attacked. By what or whom, I don’t have the foggiest idea. But your body is probably fine, alive and in some sort of magical stasis, since you can still feel things to some degree, though not anything like pain. They forced your very essence out of your body and you fled as soon as you were able to. When Craig opened the ouija conduit, you saw your opportunity to escape and took it.”

“Is there any way to track his body down?” Craig asked, not missing the grateful look Kenny sent him. 

“There should be. It’s a tricky spell, but you and I should be able to manage it. I was missing a few of the ingredients necessary, but Ike’s tracking them down for me. The only problem is that it can only be performed during the first night of the waning crescent moon, and that’s not for another week and a half,” Kyle said. 

“Wait so you’re telling me this is real? Like this spell will actually locate my body?” Kenny asked. “A body that is real and whole and just… sitting somewhere, waiting for me to get back to it?” 

“I believe so, yes,” Kyle said, nodding affirmatively. A smile lit Kenny’s face then, and it was like all the air left the room. His smile was blinding and bright and Craig was utterly transfixed by it. Like a switch had been flipped within Kenny, he was beaming now, joy etched into every inch of his face. Even Kyle and Stan were struck into a blushed silence, and they’d been wrapped around one another for nearly a hundred years. He ran a hand through his pale hair — his blond hair, Craig reminded himself — and loosed a shaky laugh, his grin growing impossibly wider. There were dimples in his cheeks, Craig realized. He wanted to brush his thumbs over them and kiss those cold lips, press against him until the smile rubbed off on him, too.

“That’s — god, that’s amazing,” Kenny breathed, just as awestruck by the news as everyone else was by his smile. “To get my body back after just a week and a half is… jesus, more than I could have hoped for even just this morning!” He squeezed his own face. “I don’t even care if I’m something completely lame, I don’t care if I’m a plain old boring human, I’ll have a  _ body _ again!”

“You will,” Kyle said, finding his voice. “If we can get near enough to it, your connection to it should renew itself, and you should be snapped back into it automatically.” 

That smile like fire took up the whole room again, and Kenny slumped forward, burying his face in his hands. He pushed his hands through his hair again and when he sat back up, his smile was softer, but no less bright. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you enough,” he said. Stan looked proud, giving Kyle’s knee a squeeze. 

“Just promise me you’ll stick around for a little while after you get your body back. I’m dying to know what you are,” Kyle said, his eyes sparkling. “Silver sings to you and gold makes you feel like you’re being hugged. I’ve  _ got _ to know what you are that causes that kind of reaction.” 

“That’s a deal,” Kenny laughed. “I want to know what the hell I am too. Something undocumented?” 

“Sounds like it. You’re reactions aren’t catalogued,” Kyle said with a shrug.

“I asked my great grandmother about it,” Stan offered. “She’s been around for like, seven hundred years and she hasn’t heard of anything like that either. To be fair, though, she’s literally been living underground for the past five hundred years, so she’s not really up to speed on most things.” 

“Your memories should come back when you re-enter your body,” Craig added. “You’ll know who and what you are as soon as you merge.” 

“And the good news is that you’ll really only have been missing for a week and a half, tops,” Stan said brightly. “Around here, that’s not even enough time to cause a fuss. You might not even be really missing yet!”

“So I’ll be able to fill you guys in on what I am, I’ll remember my family and friends, and… oh, and I guess find out who did this to me, huh?” Kenny mused, his voice trailing off. 

Oh. Craig had forgotten that detail, swept up as he was in Kenny’s joy. Yes, there was the small matter of someone attacking Kenny and forcing his soul out of his body. It would take a strong concentration of powerful magic to do that to someone, especially if it was against their will. 

“Mephistopheles did mention that you said you were in danger. Whatever did this to you, you might not have been able to fight it on your own,” Craig said quietly. Kenny frowned.

“Well, you’re not on your own anymore,” Kyle said, smiling darkly at Craig, who returned it easily. Neither of them were slouches, which was a humbler way of saying that they were two of the most powerful witches in the midwestern United States. Kyle was a little more infamous, thanks to his research and temper. Craig liked to keep his abilities a little quieter, though the whole ‘levitating at eight years old’ thing had stuck to him like glue. Stan was imposing in his own rights as well, though vampiric magic operated a little differently. Still, his ability to light things on fire with his mind was pretty damn useful. 

“That thing may still have my body in its possession,” Kenny said. 

“Then we take it back,” Craig said firmly. He hadn’t had to actually fight in quite some time, but he dueled with Kyle frequently and was always prepared to beat Terrance Mephesto into the ground, so he figured they had things well under control. They unfortunately had no way to plan for anything, since they didn’t know what they were up against. Something powerful, if he had to guess. “Whatever did this to you, did so against your will. I don’t have a problem taking it down.” Forcibly removing spirits from bodies was classified as a stage one paranormal crime, defined as ‘spiritual molestation’, and was taken very seriously, even in a fucked up little town like South Park. 

“Don’t worry, dude. We’ll get your body back. Ike’s gathering the necessary ingredients for the spell, he should have them back in a day or two,” Stan said. “Then Kyle and Craig can prepare the spell and boom — you’ve got your body back.”

Craig and Kyle spoke together about the details of the spell, deciding that Craig should lead it since he was the one who opened the conduit that brought Kenny through in the first place. They looked up the spell in one of Craig’s books and worked on how Kyle would assist and whether or not their familiars should be involved. Stan chatted with Kenny as he finished his beer, talking animatedly about what Kenny could be. Craig was pretty sure he heard ‘werewolf versus vampire WWE league’ mentioned at least twice. 

Kyle eventually took Stan’s hand and, after a promise to keep in touch, vanished from Craig’s study, leaving Kenny and Craig in the silence of the cottage once more. Craig met Kenny’s gaze, and the man’s face crumpled before he swiftly buried it in his hands. He began to weep quietly, the only things giving him away being a shaky, wet inhale and the shiver of his shoulders. Craig let him cry, not feeling as awkward as he usually did when people cried around him. He had plenty of practice with Clyde, but it always made him feel uncomfortable. There was none of that with Kenny, maybe because this was simply an expression of relief and joy, unable to be contained. When he looked up, there were silver tears glistening on his cheeks, and Craig couldn't help the smile on his face at their beauty. He leaned over and wiped at them gently, holding one up on his finger. It looked like liquid mercury covering a pearl. 

"Maybe you're Ljósálfar," he said softly. "A light elf, old and venerated and beautiful." Kenny's eyes widened minutely. "Their tears are like this, and they've got certain healing properties, like a phoenix. They're so beautiful, they're called angel's tears." Kenny gazed down at the teardrop sparkling on Craig’s finger, and then lifted his eyes up to Craig’s. They were so washed out, like whatever shade of blue they’d been had grey paint mixed into it until it was a shadow of its former self. Craig couldn’t wait to see them as they were meant to be, unfiltered by the haze of a forced projection. 

“Would I have to return to their ancestral home?” Kenny asked quietly. “I don’t know how much I’d like Sweden.” Craig smirked.

“They’re unbound; you can go wherever you like,” he said. 

“What if I want to stay here?” 

Craig didn’t ask if he meant South Park, or with Craig. He figured he didn’t need to.

“Wherever you like,” he murmured. He swept his thumb over the tear on his finger and wiped it away to nothingness, leaving behind a faint silvery smear that warmed his skin. The tears on Kenny’s face had dried, leaving a little effervescent sheen on his cheeks. 

“Can I kiss you again?” Kenny asked. 

They hadn’t so much as brought up their kisses from last night. They’d necked in the garden for what felt like hours, tongues probing and licking and hands wandering chastely and curiously. When Craig woke up in the morning, he sat across from Kenny as he ate some cereal, listening to him talk about where he went exploring last night, since projections felt no fatigue. Neither of them mentioned the kisses they’d shared, and it was like it hadn’t even happened. 

Except that it did. 

They’d kissed, long and languid and slow in Craig’s yard while the moon rose above them. Kenny’s lips were cold, they’d never warmed on contact, not like a vampire would. His hands were cold, no matter how long he kept them tucked up the back of Craig’s shirt, pressed flat against his skin. His eyes were cold, no matter how his lips smirked upward mischievously. Craig remembered how his chest felt when Kenny pulled their bodies close and kissed along his jawline. He felt safe and cared for and, if he believed in falling in love within twelve hours, loved beyond measure. It was absurd, of course, because love didn’t happen like that, despite what the diviners hawked about soul mates. 

Kissing, though, was something he enjoyed freely when he could. So he leaned in and brushed his lips against Kenny’s, softly at first and then with a little more pressure when Kenny sighed against him. He slid his hand down to curl beneath Kenny’s chin, encouraging him to kiss him back. Kenny shifted, and then his mouth was covering Craig’s entirely, lips cold and dry. Kissing Kenny was a bit like wrapping himself in a large weighted blanket, cocooning him and making him feel untouchable to the world. Craig slid a hand back into his hair, holding onto the fluttering locks and pressing Kenny into his mouth more insistently. Without breaking the kiss, Kenny stood and shuffled over to settle himself in Craig’s lap. Both of Kenny’s cool, slender hands cupped Craig’s face and he deepened the kiss, opening his mouth and sliding his tongue against the seam of Craig’s lips. With a soft sigh, Craig opened his mouth and Kenny licked his way in, cool and wet in a way that should have been off-putting. If the twitch of Craig’s cock was any indication, it certainly wasn’t in the slightest. Craig inched his hands up Kenny’s thighs, digging his fingers in just enough so that they wouldn’t sink into his flesh. It wouldn’t have hurt Kenny, of course, but Craig figured that if kissing a projection didn’t turn him off, sticking his fingers through one might. 

When the flat of Craig’s palm pressed against Kenny’s leg, Kenny brought his hand down and covered Craig’s, holding it there. 

“I feel alive when your hands are on me,” he murmured.

“You  _ are _ alive,” Craig reminded him gently. Kenny furrowed his brow, closing his eyes.

“‘S hard to remember, sometimes. Can’t breathe, can’t eat, can’t sleep; it’s all… it all makes me forget that I have a body somewhere,” he said, frowning. Craig shifted his leg, one eyebrow twitching upwards. He let one of his hands flit over to Kenny’s groin, and he palmed at the half formed erection there.

“You  _ are _ alive, and you  _ do _ have a body,” he said, relishing in the way Kenny gasped. He pressed a little more insistently, and Kenny whined. “Can you feel that?” he asked. Kenny nodded fervently, rolling his hips into Craig’s hand. He curled his fingers and Kenny’s hips twitched against him, hardening so quickly now that it was making Craig dizzy. He kissed Kenny’s open mouth, smirking. “Need more proof?” Through seemingly great effort, Kenny paused his gyrating hips and stared down at Craig for a moment before smirking.

“You sure you wanna fuck a ghost?”

“Projection,” Craig corrected. “Fucked my share of paranormal and supernatural beings, but never a projection.” There was so much more that Craig simply couldn’t unpack right now — he couldn’t just sit Kenny down and explain to him all the reasons why he wanted this, wouldn’t regret this, reasons that had nothing to do with putting a notch in his bedpost or satiating curiosity. He couldn’t tell him that there was  _ something _ about him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, couldn’t explain why he trusted him so much so quickly, why he was so determined to help him. Partly because it was embarrassing and partly because he didn’t have the answers to the questions Kenny would ask. Clyde would absolutely call him easy, but this was so much different than his occasional hookups with people he found pretty in bars and lounges. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but he gave a shit about this, didn’t want to fuck it up because he didn’t want this to be a singular occurrence. “You sure you remember how to fuck?” he quipped. Kenny threw his head back and laughed.

"Sure as the day is long," he shot back. He bent his head down and kissed Craig, hot and confident in a way that lit Craig's gut on fire.

"Good," he murmured. "Fuck me." Kenny grinned against his mouth, wolfish and daring before he sucked Craig's lower lip into his mouth a nipped at it sharply. Craig hissed, his hips jolting upward to grind against Kenny's groin. He was used to heat, so the chill of the man on top of him was unusual and thrilling. He put his hands around Kenny's waist, clutching at the strange, cool fabric of his hoodie. He tugged on it, grunting petulantly into the kiss until Kenny broke it with a laugh, leaning back to strip the hoodie from his body. He tossed it away and they both watched as it hovered in mid-air just beside them. 

"Weird," Craig muttered. Kenny barked out a laugh again.

"You're about to fuck some kind of forced astral projection of an unknown entity and you think that's weird?" he asked. Craig shrugged. He'd fucked a member of the Seelie court and never suffered any repercussions. He was pretty sure his dick was the least of his concerns. 

Craig focused his attention onto Kenny's body and his mouth ran dry. Hidden beneath the baggy clothes was a body of carved marble, just as pale and just as defined. Lean cords of muscle lined his arms and sides, tapering down into a narrow waist and slender hips. His abdominals were well defined but not obscene, and as Craig reached out and walked a hand up his back, he could feel the hills and valleys of musculature there as well. He was thin and well built and Craig bit his lip; he was non-judgmental, if a little shallow. His past partners, no matter their species, were all attractive. Kenny was cosmic, otherworldly, breathtakingly gorgeous. Even ashy-pale and cold, he was the most beautiful thing Craig had ever laid eyes on. He didn't know if he'd be able to handle laying eyes on him when he was back in his body properly, warm and bright. He was about to pass out now, as he was. 

To his credit, Kenny seemed surprised too.

"Oh, damn," he mused, staring down at his body. "That's —"

"Hotter than hell? Yes." Craig leaned forward and placed a hot, open mouthed kiss on Kenny's chest, just beside his nipple. Kenny gasped, tilting his head back and pressing his chest forward. 

"God, if you could just  _ feel _ your mouth, you wouldn't be saying that. You're like scalding water, all over," he whispered. Craig kissed his way over to his nipple, swirling his tongue around the hard, tight little bud. 

"Too much?" he asked, genuinely concerned. Kenny tilted his head down to glare at him.

"Don't you dare stop."

Smirking to himself, Craig latched back onto one of his nipples and sucked on it as he pressed his hands to Kenny’s back, spreading his long fingers to cover as much of him as possible in heat. Kenny keened, arching deliciously against him, his hips rolling down to create a glorious, cold friction. He  _ wanted _ . It was such a raw, unprocessed feeling that he couldn’t remember ever being subjected to before. He wanted Kenny fiercely, in any way he’d be able to have him. He licked a broad stripe up Kenny’s neck, blazing a path to his lips, when both of Kenny’s cool hands came up and grasped at his face. 

“Let me be inside of you,” he murmured. “I want you to burn me alive.” He kissed him, open mouthed and cool and it immediately lit Craig on fire. He nodded his assent, eager like a virgin. Kenny dug his long fingers into Craig’s hair as he pushed the grey flannel from his shoulders and tugged at the plain t-shirt he wore beneath it. Craig stripped his shirts from his body and cast them aside, landing below Kenny’s floating hoodie. Kenny leaned back to appraise him, and for the first time in many long years, across many partners, Craig felt self-conscious of his body. But Kenny ran his fingers down Craig’s chest, something pleased flickering in his eyes before he leaned down to suction himself to Craig’s neck. Craig shivered as cool lips and teeth and tongue assaulted his neck, marking him up and leaving a trail of frostfire across his skin. Kenny ground down on him, their erections pressed together through their jeans, and Craig had never been more unimpressed with a zipper. He slipped his thumbs into the waistband of Kenny’s jeans and followed the line around to the front of his pants, immediately popping the button open and sliding the zipper down. He reached within and grasped Kenny’s cock, groaning at the feel of it even as Kenny moaned. 

His cock was cool, just like the rest of him, feeling thick and heavy in his palm. He wanted it in his mouth, as soon as he could get it there. He shoved at Kenny, pushing him off his lap. He looked confused for a moment until Craig slid to the floor and settled on his knees before him, grasping his jeans and yanking them down around his muscular thighs. His cock stood proud and uncut before him, bobbing temptingly in front of Craig’s face. Craig placed his hands on Kenny’s thighs and leaned in, brushing a wet kiss across the shaft. Kenny whined, closing his eyes and swaying forward slightly, eager for more contact. Without any further preamble, Craig opened his mouth and sucked on the tip of Kenny’s cock. 

Kenny shouted, thrusting forward involuntarily and pressing himself further into Craig’s mouth in the process. Kenny babbled as Craig worked down as far as he could go, his voice a litany of failed words and desperate, gasping moans. Craig flattened his tongue along the underside of Kenny’s shaft, undulating against his foreskin and coating it with saliva. It was still cool, despite being surrounded by the heat of Craig’s mouth, but it tasted clean and otherwise like any other cock he’d had. He reached out with a hand as he drew back, twisting his fist down the shaft and revealing the swollen glans for him to lick and suck at. Kenny whined low in his throat, threading his fingers into Craig’s thick black hair as Craig worked him expertly. 

“Fuck,” Kenny breathed, his hips thrusting forward of their own accord. Craig accepted it, his throat relaxing to take all of Kenny in. He felt the sting of tears in his eyes and he loved it, wanted more of it. Using the hand that was still on Kenny’s thighs, he guided him into thrusting motions. Kenny gazed down at him with wide, pale eyes, and Craig winked up at him, unable to smile much with a cock down his throat. Kenny got the message, though, and began a series of shallow thrusts that eventually picked up into slower, deeper ones. Craig opened his throat, breathed when Kenny withdrew, and let Kenny fuck his mouth. His jaw ached from the effort of keeping it open to avoid clipping Kenny with his teeth, but it had been so long since he’d been comfortable enough with anyone to allow this to happen. As the tears ran down his face, as Kenny brushed them away while he fucked into his throat, he realized that he missed it. Not simply being face-fucked, but being this comfortable enough with someone else. He’d think about the strangeness of it all at some other point, when his hormones weren’t singing out to him with lust and fire colouring the song. 

Kenny’s thrusts began to falter, and he pulled back on his own, gasping and breathing heavily, his hands still locked firmly in Craig’s hair. Craig sniffled, wiping his nose with the back of his hand but leaving his tears to track down his cheeks. He dropped his hands to his own fly and quickly undid it, only for Kenny to yank him up to his feet and kiss him hard. Cool hands were at his waist, pushing his pants down over his hips, and then one was at his ass, slapping hard and cupping him there. Craig groaned into the kiss, pressing their cocks together. He gasped at the sensation of a cold cock against his own hot one, and he briefly worried that he’d go soft from it, but as he pressed his body to Kenny’s cold one, he couldn’t help but be reminded of temperature play. Tweek’s control over fire and Kyle’s control over ice had proven to be  _ very _ enjoyable in the past, and Kenny’s body was more akin to that than anything else. He was so aroused that he didn’t think he’d ever go soft again, especially with the way Kenny was moaning against him, grabbing at his back and hips like a man possessed. 

Craig stepped out of his jeans and turned around to kneel on the chair, gripping the armrests and glancing over his shoulder at Kenny, presenting his ass and pinning him with a smouldering look he’d mastered a very long time ago. Kenny looked shattered, dragging a hand down his face before he stepped up behind him and brushed two fingers down the crack of his ass. 

“Fuck, are all witches like this?” he muttered. “Shameless, filthy boys without any decency to speak of?” Craig laughed, breathy and husky. “Or is that just you?” Smirking, Craig waved a hand as Kenny spoke, and then his fingers were coated with lubricant. Kenny paused, presumably to look down at his fingers. He slid them down Craig’s ass until they circled his entrance, pressing down and into him easily. They moaned at the same time as Kenny’s fingers sunk into him; it was like ice cubes were being slipped into him, deliciously cold against the raging heat of his body. “Fuck, you’re hot, you’re  _ so hot _ .” Craig knew he was referring to the temperature, but he’d take the compliment, too. 

Kenny worked his fingers in deeper and then pulled them out, twisting and tugging and pressing and petting as he stretched him. They felt incredible within him, slender, pliable, never-melting ice cubes that teased his walls and pressed against the tight ring of muscle. They probed deeper, brushing against his prostate and sending a chill up his spine even as he arched his back and cried out. 

“Giv’me some more lube, magic man,” Kenny managed to say, his voice sounding strangled and coarse. Craig flicked his hand again and from the pleased hum Kenny made, knew that his hand now carried a generous amount of lube. He twisted around to watch as Kenny withdrew his fingers and wrapped them around his own cock, coating the pale flesh with lube. Craig reached behind him and tugged on his own ass, exposing himself to Kenny in a way that would have made his younger self burn with shame. 

“Fuck me,” he said, his voice clear and commanding despite the tremble in his body. Grinning, Kenny stepped up behind Craig and lined his slick cock up with his hole. He pushed forward slowly, the cold, plush head of his cock slipping into his body with relative ease. Craig moaned at the sweet stretch of it, tugging harder on his ass and relaxing the muscles of his hole, shoving back a little to press Kenny's dick in further. Kenny wasn't moving, so Craig worked himself back inch by inch, gasping at the thick length spearing him in the most delightful of ways. 

When he finally felt his ass press against Kenny's hips, he realized why the other man wasn't moving. He was shaking so severely that, in any other circumstances, Craig would have thought he was suffering from hypothermia. The tremours started in his legs and eventually began in the hands on his waist. Craig twisted around to look at Kenny — his eyes were nearly closed, fluttering intensely to remain open and his mouth hung open slightly.

“You okay?” Craig murmured. He didn’t get a verbal response right away, but Kenny squeezed his hips gently. When the shaking finally began to ebb, Kenny closed his eyes and licked his lips, nodding shortly.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “You’re just —”

“Really hot?” Craig supplied with a smirk.

“Like you gave yourself an earth-core enema.”

“What if I did?”

“Then I’m sincerely concerned for your mental stability.”

“Don’t kink shame me.”

“That’s absolutely what I’m doing right now.”

“Or you could be fucking me and my sweet lava ass right now.” 

“This was an entire mistake.”

Chuckling, Craig bounced back onto Kenny’s cock once, eliciting a strangled gasp from him. His knees dug almost painfully into the old chair he knelt on, but he didn’t pay much attention to it, not with the way Kenny filled him so effortlessly, so perfectly. This seemed to finally snap Kenny back to his senses, and he thrust into Craig easily, forcefully. Craig lurched forward on his knees, gripping at the armrests and cursing loudly. Kenny’s cock was a cold, rock solid rod within him, unyielding in the best of ways. It lit a cold fire within Craig, and he could feel his own dick throbbing desperately. 

Another thrust within him and he cried out, chilly lube dripping down his balls and falling to the chair and floor before they could trickle down his cock. Kenny fucked into him earnestly now, hands on his hips, gripping so hard that Craig’s flesh was eclipsing Kenny’s fingers in the strangest way, but Kenny didn’t stop to readjust. Craig fucked back onto him, managing to maneuver his arms to the back of the chair for better leverage. 

“Hold still,” Craig commanded breathlessly. Kenny stilled as quickly as his momentum would allow, his hips stuttering against the sudden lack of friction. Pleased, Craig spread his legs so that they were braced up against either armrest and rocked back hard onto Kenny’s dick. Kenny got the message, throwing his head back and moaning loudly into the empty house but not moving. Craig fucked himself on Kenny’s cock, the head of it brushing against his prostate often enough to have him panting and whimpering in record time. Kenny’s length filled him like someone pouring resin into a mould, expanding into every crack and dip like he’d been mapping him out for centuries. 

“You — oh, god, you —” Kenny croaked, his fingers digging hard into Craig in an effort to keep himself still. And then he murmured something, a guttural, groaned thing that may have been a word, but it was not in any language Craig recognized. He moaned another word in that strange language, petting at Craig’s back as his eyes rolled back in pleasure. Craig had no idea what the language was, but it was so familiar to him that it ached, despite knowing that this was the first time he’d ever heard it. Craig let those thoughts be forced from his mind as Kenny’s cock drilled into his prostate with startling accuracy. Craig fucked back hard, a hoarse cry tearing itself from his throat, his mind now entirely focused once again on the pleasure and pressure and cold fire consuming his body.

He brought a hand to his cock and stroked himself in time with his own bouncing thrusts. He keened loudly, feeling his gut begin to coil tightly. 

"Craig," Kenny whined, his fingers flexing at his hips. At Kenny's desperate tone, Craig's fingers reflexively tightened around his cock. 

"Move, fuck me," he gasped, and he'd barely finished his sentence before Kenny was thrusting into him forcefully, sending him nearly into the back of the chair. He cried out as Kenny hammered into his prostate with enough accuracy to blur his vision. And then it stopped just as suddenly as it had started, and Kenny leaned over his back, pressing his cold body flush against him, his hands running across his chest and his lips descending to his neck. He held Craig as he ground into him, less thrusting but more prostate stimulation that made him whine, every nerve ending in his body alight with sensation. Kenny murmured softly to him, and Craig caught soft pet names mixed with that rasping, thick language of nothing. It was spoken so tenderly, slurred and indulgent that Craig felt his gut clenching almost painfully as his orgasm took him by complete surprise. His balls pulled up and he felt his dick pulse in his hand as it shot hot ropes of seed onto the chair below him, staining the ancient upholstery. Ice ran through his veins, so cold it burned, and he shouted as his body convulsed; it had been too long since he’d done this last, so coming this quickly shouldn’t have taken him by surprise as it did. He moaned weakly, come dribbling over his knuckles as his orgasm fluttered its last, feeling like heaven and hell had merged all at once as he chased the last vestiges of it. It was familiar — not just his orgasm, but the feelings that it brought along; affection and laughter and love and lust. He hadn’t felt these things in a very, very long time, and it was bewildering to feel them now, with an astral projection of unknown origins railing into him like he was going to find his body behind Craig’s prostate. 

“Burning, s’hot,” Kenny breathed, gripping his hips hard and pounding into him roughly, chasing down whatever orgasmic equivalent astral projections had. Craig twisted his head, ready to tell Kenny that he could pull out and finish in his mouth if that would be less intense for him, but the words caught in his throat. 

Kenny’s eyes were glowing silver, tiny pinpricks of light at first that grew in power and presence until they were light high beams from a car, the bright as fuck LED ones that blinded people because they enabled you to see into space. He furrowed his brow even as Kenny drilled into him harder, glowed a little brighter, moaned a little louder. And then he faltered; his head fell back and the light from his eyes grew blinding but Craig couldn't look away as Kenny reached his peak, burying his cock impossibly deep and shouting. Craig couldn't tell if his eyes were clenched shut or not, but that bright silver light was still shining and his hips were stuttering and then there was a warmth blooming in him. Kenny filled his ass and he hadn't really thought about what an astral projections come would be like, but he couldn't have imagined. He felt warm all over, radiating out from his depths and wrapping around him from the inside out. He was startled and cried out when that heat wrung another orgasm from him; it was nearly a dry one, with only the barest bit of clear fluid leaking from his sensitive cock. He whimpered as it pulsed through his body, unable to remember a point where anyone had wrung a second orgasm out of him so soon after his first. 

The second orgasm lasted longer than the first, despite nothing actually releasing; his body kept clenching and pulsing and Craig whined through it, his hips oscillating in some primal effort to seek more and escape it all at once. When it finally ebbed away, he felt boneless and weak and Kenny was slumped over his back, eerily still and silent. Craig took a moment to try and catalogue his rather unprecedented emotions over a loveless hookup, but found that he was simply confused by them, like there was a connection he wasn't making somewhere. He shifted, his knees beginning to ache in earnest, and he felt Kenny press his forehead to his spine.

"Kinda pissed I can't even be out of breath after that," he murmured. 

— 

Craig wanted to ask Kenny about their coupling, if he'd felt the cacophony of unexpected emotions as well or if it was just Craig losing his mind. Kenny seemed disinclined to talk, though. He was a little more handsy over the next few days, but less talkative, and prone to lengthy silences while he stared at the sun. They hadn’t heard from Kyle except to say that Ike had gone to Europe for one of the ingredients and would be returning soon. Craig had showed Kenny a moon chart, showing him the first night of the waning crescent and that it was only a scant four days away at this point. 

“So I guess I’ll get my body back then,” Kenny mused, brushing his fingers over the chart. 

“Yeah, you will,” Craig said, a little absently, going over the spell he’d be performing with Kyle so that he didn’t miss any details. 

“What then?” he asked. Craig looked up, but Kenny was staring out the window.

“Then you do whatever you want,” he answered. “You’ll have your freedom and your autonomy back. You can go anywhere, do anything, become anyone.”

“If I left… could I come back?” Kenny asked, his voice soft. Craig stared at him for a long moment, wishing he would turn and meet his gaze, but Kenny remained fixed at the window. 

“I hope you would,” he answered quietly, honestly. Kenny still didn’t turn to look at him, but he tipped his head down. Craig set his book down and made his way over to Kenny, pausing behind him for a moment before settling a hand on his wrist. Kenny looked down at his hand.

“This is really strange,” he confessed, his voice cracking, “and unrealistic, and impractical, and half-baked, and —” 

Craig knew what he was talking about, and it wasn't about his body. 

“I know,” he agreed softly. 

—

On the morning of the first night of the waning crescent moon, they still hadn’t heard from Ike, and Kenny was pacing fitfully, as he had been for two solid days. Craig had done his best to soothe him, explaining that the cry violet had been extinct since the 1930’s and would be difficult to acquire, since Ike would have to track down someone in the European black market that would still be cultivating it. Ike knew that it was time sensitive, and the guy was a prodigy, unnervingly charming and powerful. If anyone could find it in the time frame given, it was Ike Broflovski. 

This didn’t do much to assuage Kenny’s anxiety, and after placing a kiss to Craig’s lips, chaste and cold, he left the house to wander into the forest. Craig sent Stripe after him, his familiar taking the form of a jaguar, which made Craig smile as he watched him pad off, vanishing into the forest. 

After a light breakfast of a few blackberries, Craig began to set up his study for the spell. Moving everything to the sides of the room to clear a space large enough for the candles to be set out, gathering the simpler reagents that he had in stock, and retrieving the book with the spell in it. He curled up in a chair and for the next hour, set to memorizing every word and inflection of the spell until he was sure he could recite it in his sleep. Setting the book down on his desk, open to the spell, he texted Kyle again. He’d never admit to worrying over why Ike wasn’t back yet, but he was sure it came across well enough. Before he could even hit send, a crackle of magic rippled through the air in his house, alerting him to a friendly incoming presence.  _ Finally _ , he thought, grateful that Ike had finally returned. 

“Craig! Help!” 

That was his sister’s voice, though. Panic sliced through him and he bolted from the study and into the kitchen, automatically reaching out for Stripe with his mind to summon his familiar back to him. Tricia was standing in his kitchen, her face pallid and pale and filled with furious dread. She was holding Ike up, but only barely. Tricia had inherited none of their father’s height, and Ike was nearly as tall as Craig. He was bloodied and barely conscious, and Craig rushed over to his other side, attempting to stabilize him.

“What happened?” Craig asked, bewildered. Ike was powerful, a weird genius prodigy; Craig hadn’t thought anything could actually kick his ass like this. Tricia used the balance Craig provided to pull her husband close to her side, resting him against her hip. 

“Reinforce your wards,  _ now _ ,” she hissed, dragging Ike’s half-conscious form into his living room. “Get Kyle and Stan over here and reinforce your wards.”

Trusting his sister, he prepared to teleport to Kyle when Stripe flew through the open window in his kitchen. In the form of a crow, which was exactly what Craig needed. Stripe hopped toward Craig on the counter, looking up at him and tilting his head, intelligence and concern in his beady black eyes. 

“Go to Kyle. Tell him ‘emergency, Ike’. Repeat it,” he said. 

“Emergency. Ike,” Stripe croaked, the words pitched robotically similar to Craig’s own voice. 

“Good,” Craig said, rubbing Stripe fondly beneath his beak. “Go.” He snapped his fingers, allowing Stripe to tap further into his own well of magical abilities, and then his familiar vanished before his eyes. Before the fizzle in the air even began to dissipate, Craig was murmuring the ancient incantations that would strengthen the wards around his cottage. They were strong; just a few days ago, even Mephistopheles couldn’t materialize within them. Tricia knew how powerful the wards around the cottage were, and she told him to reinforce them anyway. Even if Ike hadn’t come in looking like he’d been put through a witch sized meat grinder, that would have been enough to raise every red flag he had in his arsenal.

He felt the bone-deep vibrations of the wards locking around his property and the house, and then he rushed out of the kitchen and into his living room, where Tricia had laid Ike out on the couch; blood stained it and was pooling on the floor, but Tricia was working quickly, her hands working over his torso. 

“He’s got a head wound, work on that,” she said tersely, not looking up from her work. The front door banged open, and Craig looked up to see Kenny rushing toward them, confused and alarmed. When his eyes fell on Ike, they widened in horror. Mouth set in a grim line, Craig turned back to Ike and knelt beside his sister, placing his hands on either side of Ike’s face and letting his magic flood through him. The back of Ike’s skull was shattered and his brain was swelling from whatever blow he took. He let his magic soothe the pressure in his brain, pressing it deeper than what was normally considered medically safe in order to determine if there was any further damage. 

Once he’d gotten the swelling under control, he carefully extracted splinters and shards of bone that had embedded themselves in the brain, and then carefully pieced his skull back together. He felt himself grow a bit nauseous at the thought of his brother-in-law’s life being at his mercy like this, poking around at grey matter and touching his spinal cord with his magic. He glanced up at his sister as his magic knit the bone back together, and he could see tears streaked down her face, though her eyes remained hard and determined. She was now working on a deep, ugly wound on Ike’s leg, having discarded the bloody pant fabric to the floor. 

Craig gently lifted Ike’s head and was attempting to fold the pieces of skin back into place when cold hands covered his. He looked up and saw Kenny supporting Ike’s head, his brows furrowed and a deep frown set on his handsome face. He nodded once, and then Craig took his hands and pressed them over the back of Ike’s head, letting his magic flow over the severed folds and allowing them to mesh back together. He tugged a pillow down and set it beneath Ike’s repaired head just in time to see his piercing blue eyes blinking up at him dazedly. 

“Trish,” Craig said. She looked up and let out a weak cry of relief when she saw her husband blink down at her. Some shuffling ensued, and Craig took over the remainder of the work on Ike’s leg while Tricia clasped her husband’s face in her hands and peppered him with kisses. 

Craig was finishing up knitting Ike’s leg back together when Stan, Kyle, and Stripe materialized in the living room. Craig was eternally grateful that Kyle hadn’t shown up earlier to see his brother in such a state, though one look at Kyle’s face as he took in the amount of blood all over the place was enough for him to piece things together on his own. Kyle knelt beside Tricia, gripping his brother’s hand with fire in his eyes. 

“What happened?” he demanded, his voice soft and furious and worried. 

“I don’t know. I was at home and then he teleported in looking like this, gasping about getting to you,” she said to Kyle. “But Craig’s house is warded against everything and I didn’t know what else to do and I —”

“You did the right thing, Tricia,” Stan said gently. 

“S-something,” Ike began, before a coughing fit took over. Kyle reached up and touched a hand to his throat, frowning slightly before he allowed a pulse of magic to flow over his brother. Ike swallowed gratefully. “Something found me in Belarus. I think they were tracking the cry violet.” Wincing slightly, he sat up. Kyle and Tricia helped him, and Stan brought him a glass of water, which he gulped down. Sighing, he rubbed his face with his hands.

“Before you tell us that, does anything else hurt?” Tricia asked, fretting over him. While Kyle and Tricia interrogated Ike over his health, Craig looked up at Kenny. He was hanging back, hovering higher than he usually did, looking vividly distressed and anxious. Craig knew that he was thinking that someone had gotten nearly killed because of him, untrue as it was. With a soft hum, he beckoned to Kenny, who looked up at him. Craig held his hand out and Kenny didn’t even hesitate to move toward him. Craig slipped his fingers around Kenny’s and gave him a little squeeze. It wasn’t as reassuring as words could be, but what Craig wanted to say was too private for everyone else to hear. 

“So you think something was tracking the cry violet?” Kyle asked, bring Craig’s attention back to the center of the room. Ike nodded.

“I had managed to find Vasilisa, and she’s the only one left in Europe who can grow it. She gave me a single petal, telling us that’s all the spell required. When I left, a blond woman attacked me,” he said. “She was waiting outside Vasilisa’s wards, and she said something about not letting me perform the spell before she attacked me. I barely made it back home.” He touched the back of his head. “All this was done as I was teleporting out of there.” Tricia reached up and stroked his hair back, her face lined with worry. Kyle frowned.

“That must be the one who attacked Kenny, then,” he said. “Why else would anyone be guarding an ingredient used on a spell to return projections to their bodies?” Ike nodded.

“That was my logic as well. There was something else, too,” he said. He paused, and Craig thought it was likely for dramatic effect because that’s how Ike was; he smirked a little, grateful that his brother-in-law’s sense of humour hadn’t been damaged by the ordeal. “The magic she attacked me with wasn’t earth-bound. It was holy.” 

Craig blinked in surprise. 

“Why — what does that mean?” Kenny blurted. Ike looked up at Kenny, his bright blue eyes scrutinizing him, not unkindly. “Are you saying she’s like, some sort of heavenly warrior sent to guard a flower?” 

“Or to eliminate you, if you’re some sort of demon,” Ike supplied with a shrug. If she’s the one who ripped you from your body, you could be some evil entity that she’s been hunting.” 

“I really doubt that,” Craig said, his voice firm. “I spoke with Mephistopheles last week and he didn’t mention any trace of demonic energies on him. He said he was painful to look at and untouched by Lilith.” An unreadable look passed over Ike’s face, his frown severe. He looked up at Kyle, and Craig figured they were probably having some sort of nonverbal conversation. This continued for a moment before both of their faces morphed into a vivid understanding, shock and raw amazement bleeding across their features. They both turned to look at Kenny, ignoring Tricia and Stan’s questions. Craig felt the urge to grab at Kenny’s hand protectively. 

“What? What is it?” he asked. 

“Kenny’s an angel,” Kyle whispered reverently. 

The wards around the house shook.

“What the fuck?” Stan grumbled, staring out the window. 

“I’m a  _ what? _ ” Kenny demanded, his voice barely a whisper. 

The wards shook again, and Craig felt them splinter. 

“We have a problem,” he said, trying to get their attention. 

“We think you’re a goddamn  _ angel _ ,” Kyle said, a grin spreading across his face, nearly identical to the one Ike wore. He turned back to his brother immediately, ignoring Kenny’s squawk of protest. “That would explain everything about him —”

“ — because it explains nothing!” Ike finished excitedly. Tricia rubbed her eyes, exhausted. The wards shuddered and the magic began to pull apart. Craig cast another incantation, which strengthened them minutely. Tricia offered her own spells, and the wards were bolstered for the time being. 

“Can you  _ please _ start making sense?” Kenny begged. Kyle turned back to Kenny, eyes blazing with discovery.

“There haven’t ever been any studies conducted on angels because they rarely come down to the middle realm. The last documented angelic occurrence was six hundred and forty-three years ago, when the Black Prince died,” Kyle explained in a rush. “There’s since been more, of course, but none which can be confirmed.”

“And it’s not like they stick around to let us figure out their quirks,” Ike added.

“That’s why you had such a reaction to gold and silver,” he said, his voice growing louder in his excitement, “and why Stan feels cold to you while dry ice doesn’t — Stan’s a vampire, he’s  _ un _ holy.”

“If a demon said that you’re untouched by Lilith, then that means you could  _ only _ have come from Heaven,” Ike said. 

Another thunderous rumble, and the wards crackled once again. 

“We don’t have time for explanations now!” Craig snapped. “The wards are  _ failing _ , which means something powerful that the wards weren’t designed to protect against is trying to get in.” Craig’s wards had never failed; his property had been a safehouse for the Disharmonic Imbalance, when the mindless creatures of South Park had fallen under the control of Cartman’s dark magics and laid siege to the town. Only Craig’s property remained untouched, much to Cartman’s fury. His wards did  _ not _ fail. That they were doing so now made his gut coil.

“What about the spell?” Kenny asked, his eyes wild. 

“We’ll have to do it after we take care of whatever is attacking us,” Craig said, forcibly bringing his voice down to a more soothing level as he reached for Kenny, holding his face between his hands. “Stripe will protect you, but you’ve got to let us handle it.” His familiar, now in the form of a bear (because like Ike, Stripe had a flair for dramatics), grunted approvingly. 

“I’d put money on it being that woman from Belarus,” Ike said. 

With a great rushing sound, not unlike a waterfall, the wards shattered.

Craig kissed Kenny, brief and chaste, and then shoved him behind him. He felt Stripe erect a barrier behind him, and all at once, Craig, Kyle, Tricia, and Ike threw their own barriers at the front door. It glowed blue, hot with magic, and then it dissipated instantly. The door swung open, and in stepped a blond woman.

Disarmed by the ease with which she dispelled magic from four of the country’s most talented witches, Craig glared at her and recognized her as the woman he saw while astral projecting last week at the biochem lab. 

“You,” he snapped. “I knew you saw me.” The woman stepped into his house, making her way down the hallway and eyeing it with the distaste of a modern art snob in a medieval museum. Her blond hair hung much the same as it had last week, and her blue eyes were just as cold and piercing. “Who are you?” 

“Kerubiel,” she said, though her voice sounded both masculine and feminine and inhuman all at once. “And I am here for,” her eyes scanned the room, landing on Kenny. Her gaze narrowed and her lips quirked downward in a frown. “That.”

“You attacked my brother,” Kyle growled. Craig smirked despite himself - Kyle’s aura was thrumming with energy, his infamous temper rearing up at the affront to his family. Explosive, angry Kyle always produced results. Collateral damage in the form of singed surroundings, too, but always results. 

“The both of you are, unfortunately, too intelligent for your own good,” she said. “I cannot allow you to put him back into his body.”

“He deserves the right to choose,” Stan snapped. She turned on him, anger blazing in her eyes. Stan, to his credit, did not shrink away from the creature that could probably wipe him from existence with the blink of an eye. 

“He deserves nothing,” Kerubiel snarled. “He is a traitor to Heaven and must be taken back for judgment.” She leveled the group with a cold glare. “I am already doing him a favour by not burning his body to cinders where it remains.”

“Yeah, and where is that?” Craig asked. “Let’s level the playing field.” 

“I don’t bargain with the damned,” she said, bored. “Give me…  _ Kenneth _ ,” she spat, as if the name left a bad taste in her mouth, “and I will leave here without reducing this place to ash.” 

“Kenny isn’t an angelic name,” Kenny said loudly, from behind Stripe’s barrier. Craig blinked at him incredulously, and Ike chuckled despite the situation. “You could be lying.”

“You,” Kerubiel said, disgust dripping from her voice, “struck your name from the holy records and replaced it with  _ Kenny McCormick _ , which is the most repugnantly American name I’ve ever had assault my senses.”

“Why would I do that?” Kenny demanded. Kerubiel sneered.

“You fled Heaven to live in the middle realm, took a human lover, and abandoned your duties,” she said, her voice rising in anger. The room grew warmer, and Stan took several steps back, looking uncomfortable. “You left paradise to moulder down here like some subterranean slug, you ungrateful wretch.” Moving faster than his eyes could comprehend, she raised her hand and fired a holy bolt of magic. Stan, capable of tracking things and moving faster than the witches could, darted forward and struck her hand just as she fired at Kenny. The bolt of magic glanced off of Stripe’s barrier and blew out the corner of Craig’s house, sending wood and plaster and shingles crashing down. 

Furious, Craig cast a binding spell at her, her arms snapping down to her sides. With a snarl, he chanted under his breath, strengthening the spell as quickly as he could. Tricia added her own reinforcements, as did Ike. Kyle added a secondary binding spell, threading it with Craig’s easily. Years of working together had brought a harmony to their magic nearly as symbiotic as what he had with Tricia. Kerubiel snarled, struggling against the bonds, but Craig threw another binding spell at her, this time threading what little he knew of Enochian into it. This caused her to screech, though whether it was in pain or with recognition, he didn’t know. 

Craig felt a coolness to his right, and glanced over to see Kenny standing beside him, his face hard and cold as he stared at the bound angel before them. He quickly threaded what he hoped was the Enochian word for shield into the spell before speaking to Kenny.

“We’ll get the information out of her, don’t worry,” he said, speaking calmly and as reassuringly as he could. “Someone is missing you, I think.”

“No one is missing him. His soul exists outside of his body, and anyone who knew him here in the middle realm had their memory of him erased as well. They don’t even know he exists,” Kerubiel hissed, her blended voice slithering across the room like an oil stain. Kenny’s face remained stoic, his face looking like it had been carved from marble by the greatest of the Renaissance artists. “Whomever his  _ lover _ is, they’ve got nothing left; not so much as a crumb of his existence remains to them.”

With an incensed shout, Craig hurled a ball of magic at her, striking her in the face and mussing her perfect blond hair. 

“Fuck you,” he snapped. “You don’t get him.” He stormed up to her, aware that his own aura was full of thunder and static. He reached out and grabbed her hair, yanking her face up to look at him; she was smirking, and it enraged him further. “I’m calling my coven, and we are going to perform the spell and keep you bound and we are putting him back in his body. And if I get my way, I’m going to smother you in holy oil and light you on fire in a fucking cave.”

“Craig,” Kenny said, soft and admonishing. Her smirk hadn’t wavered through his speech, her cold blue eyes boring through him. “It’s going to be okay.” Craig stared at him, his ghostly, pale face giving nothing away. Even his eyes were pale and unemotional, and something in Craig’s stomach churned uncomfortably as he released his hold on the angel.

_ Someone isn’t even aware that they’re missing you, and it’s not me. You’re going to leave me when you get your body back and everything will go back to the way it was. And then I’ll be the one missing you, aware that I’m doing so and I will hurt. But you deserve to have your body back, you deserve the life you fought for.  _

“You will get nothing,” Kerubiel laughed, her voices making her sound insane. “A seraph who abandons the holiest of realms is to be damned to the ninth circle of Hell. A traitor’s fate awaits you,  _ Kenneth _ .”

Craig’s mind reeled. Seraphs were among the highest order of angels in Christian theology, and fifth in Judaism. Could she be telling the truth - that Kenny was a seraph who had neglected his duties in heaven to take a mortal lover? To strike his angelic name from the records and leave his Heavenly paradise behind would surely be unforgivable to the holy hosts. 

“I think that I’d rather be stuck like this for eternity than go anywhere with you,” Kenny said, settling his cold gaze and impassive face on Kerubiel. “But I will come with you if you leave them in peace, unharmed.”

“Kenny, no,” Craig said, striding up to him. He took his cold hands and held them, brushing his thumbs over the backs of them. Kenny’s face softened, and he touched his forehead to Craig’s. “We can keep her bound and perform the spell and get your body and your memories back.”

“And what about you?” Kenny asked quietly, his voice not even a whisper. Craig sighed and closed his eyes.

“ _ I _ will be happy knowing that you’re whole again,” Craig answered, honest and a little pained. 

“Disgusting that even as a disembodied spirit, you cannot control yourself long enough to remember that such emotions are foreign to you by nature,” Kerubiel taunted. 

“That is enough, Kerubi’el,” a new voice thundered. 

The temperature in the house suddenly rose, leaving Stan grunting uncomfortably. The magical binds around Kerubiel dissipated immediately, but she did not move. Rather, she looked stricken in fear, her gaze averted to the floor as she dropped to her knees. Her entire form shimmered before them, her casual clothes fading out of existence only to be replaced with iridescent robes of silver. Four bright, brilliant wings glimmered into existence behind her as she prostrated herself before an entity that none of them could see. 

A tall, dark man with a shaved head stepped through the still-open door of Craig’s house. He was impeccably dressed in a black three piece suit with a tie, and black shoes so shiny they looked wet. Stan stepped back immediately, hovering near Stripe. Kyle took note of this and moved to stand with his boyfriend, ready to protect him. The man swept the room with his green eyes, surveying the situation before moving to stand in front of Kerubiel, tucking his hands into his pockets with a frown. 

“This is getting out of hand,” Craig snapped, crossing his arms and leveling the newcomer with a glare. “Who the hell are you?” The man slowly turned to look at Craig, one eyebrow raised. 

“I am Gabriel, archangel of Heaven.” His lips quirked upwards in a small smile. “You are correct, Craig. This is all quite unnecessary, and I have been sent to rectify matters.” 

“You’ll take Kenny over my dead body,” Craig said, shifting to stand in front of Kenny.

“Craig, you can’t fight a fucking  _ archangel _ ,” Kenny hissed, tugging on his hand. Gabriel chuckled.

“Kenneth is correct, though I am not here to fight,” he said. Tricia sidled up to Craig, wrapping her hand around his other arm. 

“Why don’t we just listen to what the nice archangel has to say, Craig,” she said pointedly. 

“Then he’d better start talking, because I’m at the end of my patience,” he grumbled. Gabriel inclined his head. 

“I will not tarry.” He turned back to Kerubiel, who had remained groveling on the floor. “Kerubi’el, rise.” She obeyed instantly, keeping her eyes downcast. “You have taken punishment into your own hands when no punishment should have been dealt.” She lifted her face to look at him then, righteous anger burning in them. 

“He struck his name from the records and abandoned his duties! He is a general, most trusted by Micha’el and just as accomplished! He fled! Took a human lover and abandoned Heaven!” She shook her head, tears burning in her eyes now. “I have seen lesser deeds punished with far worse fates.”

Sighing, Gabriel put his hands on her cheeks and brushed away her tears. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch, and Craig could see the tenderness there. It was like a father admonishing a wayward child who had spray painted the house, instead of an eternal angel who had nearly killed someone. 

“Little one, Kenneth did not abandon his post. He was  _ rewarded _ ,” Gabriel answered, his voice gentle and calm. Craig’s mouth fell open and Tricia gasped. 

“What!” Kyle exclaimed from behind them, sounding downright offended. 

“He was rewarded?” Kerubiel asked, her confusion mirroring that of the entire room. Kenny stood rooted to his spot, his eyes wide. Gabriel turned to look at him, then moved to stand before him. Craig fought to not move, and Tricia’s grip on his arm was painful. The energy that radiated around Gabriel was unlike anything Craig had felt before. Warm and genial and with such an overwhelming aura of protection that even Craig felt like he could simply be swept away in Gabriel’s embrace and welcomed into Heaven, damned witch though he may be. 

“You will be returned to your body. Do you wish to know now, or would you like to simply have your memories back?” Gabriel asked, staring down at Kenny. Standing proud and tall, Kenny lifted his face and allowed the shocked look to fall from his countenance. 

“Tell me, please,” he said, his voice soft and wavering. 

“You were Micha’el’s right hand, and fought in more battles than even he. You won war after war against the forces of Hell, and through your efforts, peace and balance have reigned on Earth. When the forces was upset and balance was thrown, you were the one to restore it,” Gabriel said, launching into an explanation immediately. Craig kept his eyes on Kenny as the archangel spoke; his hands were clenched into fists that shook despite his clear effort to stop the tremours. 

“Why did I leave it all behind?” he asked, breathy and stricken. 

“During a sojourn to Earth, you met a human and fell in love, despite the rules against doing so.” Gabriel smirked at Kenny, who looked a little sheepish. “You always were one to bend the rules and make them your own. Always a bit of a wild one, though your heart is second to none.

“Micha’el had long ago offered you a reward for your several millennia of victories and unparallelled service to the Holy Throne. Each time it was proffered, you turned it down, claiming that serving was reward enough. After meeting the human, you went to him and asked for something, for the first time in your life.”

“Freedom,” Kenny murmured. Gabriel inclined his head. 

“And Michael granted it?” Craig asked, nearly disbelieving what he was hearing. “Hell is eternal, it won’t ever be stopped. There’s always going to be wars to fight.” 

“Correct. However, things are not as chaotic as they were several thousand years ago. We have battered them down for eons untold, but it was only when the sentient beings of Earth began to fight back as well that we gained the upper hand.” Gabriel paused, looking pensive. “Magical beings such as yourself, both mortal and immortal, have played a larger hand in the eternal war than you realize,” he said, though he didn’t sound offended or irritated by this admission. “You tipped the scales, forced the creatures of Hell back where they belong. We have been able to, largely, keep them there.”

“So things are stable enough that Micha’el granted my request,” Kenny said. 

“You were permitted to strike your angelic name from the Great Book; none know what it was, save El Himself, and He doesn’t talk much,” Gabriel said with a wink. “You took the name Kenneth, and you chose to remain on Earth with your human, with the condition that if Heaven ever needed you, you would heed the Holy Trumpet and return to battle.”

“Then why was I forced from my body?” Kenny asked, his voice suddenly angry. “If I was rewarded for my perfect attendance at Boy Scouts, why would she rip me out of my body and attack my friends?”

Gabriel sighed, placing his hands on Kenny’s shoulders, and Kenny gasped. “You must forgive her, my brother. Your reward was not common knowledge, and when news of your disappearance finally began to filter through the ranks, she became angry. Kerub’iel is cherubim, closest to El, and saw your departure as an affront to Him.”

“So you’re saying that the angels played Telephone and she got the wrong gossip from the grapevine?” Kyle asked, incredulous. Gabriel’s gaze snapped to Kyle, and then he laughed, and Craig thought he might weep. The archangel’s laughter was bright and clear, like the ringing of an ancient, deep bell, echoing around the room as if they were in a cathedral instead of his wrecked little cottage. 

“That is one way to put it,” Gabriel said, mirth still colouring his words. “I believe the rest of your questions will be better answered when you are ensconced within your body once again and have your memories back.” He cradled Kenny’s head in the palm of one large hand and kissed his forehead. “It is strange to love you when you are so cold; I wish to embrace you once again as my brother. Will you come with me?” 

Kenny nodded without hesitation, silver tears falling from his eyes. He kissed Gabriel’s forehead in return, and then turned to face Craig. He reached for him, and Craig went into his arms immediately, burying his face in Kenny’s neck. 

“Whatever happens, whatever I remember, I’m coming back to you,” Kenny murmured, threading his fingers into Craig’s thick black hair. 

“What about your lover?” Craig asked, ashamed that his voice cracked. 

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it,” Kenny said, and Craig chuckled at the malaphor despite himself. “Hey, they couldn’t even remember me on account of a little thing like forced astral projection. They can’t be that special.” Kenny pulled back and placed a chaste kiss on Craig’s lips. Craig wanted nothing more than to deepen it and never let go, but Kenny pulled back again. Craig wiped the silvery tears from Kenny’s cheeks and stepped back. He turned to look at Kerubiel, who looked deeply ashamed of herself, staring at the floor, her wings drooping and curling around her body. 

Without realizing what he was doing, Craig found himself standing in front of her. She looked up at him, golden tears glimmering on her cheeks, shame in her eyes. He reached out to her and she tracked his hand with her gaze, but she didn’t flinch away. He smoothed down her pale blond hair from where he’d grabbed it earlier, gentle as he would be with his sister.

“I forgive you,” he murmured. She blinked at him with wide, wet eyes; the cold glint in them had vanished, and she smiled at him, radiant and blinding. Craig’s chest clenched, and he wondered if falling a little in love with angels when they smiled was just a thing with them. She laughed a little, soft and melodious, and she swiped at her tears with her hands. Fingers glistening with gold, she reached up and smeared them across Craig’s forehead, beneath his hair. She brushed his hair aside and kissed his forehead, and Craig felt a little like someone had cracked an egg on his head and let its innards run down over his neck and shoulders.

“A blessing for forgiveness that I do not deserve,” she said, even as more golden tears fell from her eyes. She moved to Ike, who boldly did not move away from her. She did the same to him, swiping her tears across his forehead and kissing the spot. “And an apology for wrongs I have committed unfairly.” She stepped away from the witches then and stood behind Gabriel, humbled and humiliated, but looking less ashamed than before. 

“Live as you have, witches of Earth,” Gabriel said, his voice authoritative once more. “Put this behind you.” He flicked his emerald gaze over to the blown out corner of Craig’s house, and before Craig could even turn to look at it, it was repaired, exactly as it was before, cracked stone in the corner and all. 

“One more thing,” Kerubiel said, a small smile on her pretty face. “Witches are not damned. You are as natural as the trees, and your inclination toward good or ill is entirely dependent on you.” And then she shimmered out of Craig’s cottage, leaving a few glimmering specks of gold behind until they, too, faded. 

“What will become of her?” Kenny asked, staring at the last fading spot of gold. Gabriel sighed.

“That is entirely up to Micha’el,” he said. “Though, you of anyone would be able to sway him in whichever direction you choose. He is very fond of you.” Kenny nodded, mollified by the answer, and then turned to Craig and the others. He gave them a small, two fingered salute.

“Catch you on the flipside,” he said with a little grin. 

And then they were gone. 

Craig let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Did he just quote The Boondock Saints?” Stan asked, sounding amused. Tricia sighed as Ike dissolved into laughter. 

“How is this my life?” Craig grumbled, staring up at the ceiling. He shook his head, then pinched the bridge of his nose, a habit he’d picked up from Stan, in his eternal exasperation. “I’m going to reset the wards. Kerubiel completely ruined them. Someone order a couple of pizzas, I’m starving.” He left his house through the front door, Stripe padding along behind him, a jaguar once again. 

As he wandered through his forest, he lifted his hands and spoke the incantations that would set his previously indestructible wards up again. He seriously considered adjusting them to include the Heavenly hosts, but then figured that Kenny would need a way back in, when he eventually came back. He hoped it would only be a few days, that he’d reunite with his lover and come back for a visit. It would be hard, to sit with Kenny without reaching out for him to kiss and hold, but never seeing him again would be far worse. 

He felt Stripe rub against his legs, and he nearly fell over; having a jaguar rub against you, pretending to be a housecat, was a lot of force. He reached down and stroked Stripe’s head, drawing comfort from his familiar. He cast the wards three times over, reaching out with his magic to ensure that they were firmly in place once again. He meandered through his forest, comfortable once again now that it was protected, and brushed his hands against the trees as he walked. The leaves had mostly fallen from all but the evergreens, leaving him a clear view of the sky. The sun was setting, casting brilliant orange and pink across the mountains. They had clearly been inside for longer than he’d thought if it was evening already. He sighed, finding a spot that offered a clear view of the evening sky and flopping down in the leaves, lifting his arm for Stripe to curl beneath him. 

Would Kenny bring his lover to visit his almost-lover? Would he tell the truth and explain things, or would Craig be his secret almost-romance? 

What would Kenny look like, bright and vivid without the veil of another plane of existence draped over him? His hair was blond - would it be pale like Kerubiel’s, or strawberry blond like Tricia’s? His eyes were blue, but would they be like the ocean or the sky? Would his touch be warm? Would he hold, and be held, the same? Would Craig still be captivated by his sunfire bright smile that could light up a room and render everyone in it heartstruck? 

Of course he would be. He sighed, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. He would be, because he’d fallen ass over face for a fucking astral projection with no memories in a week and a half, because he was weak and sappy and stupid. Because he always fell in love so easily and so quickly, which is why he was a recluse in the fucking woods instead of living in town close to his family and friends. If he lived in town then he’d go out and just end up falling in love with anyone who flirted with him and that was just not conducive to a happy existence. 

He stared up at the pink clouds scattered in front of an orange and blue gradient, his eyes tracking a shooting star as it streaked across his field of vision. Some eighty-odd years ago, he’d considered leaving the cottage and just using self control and logic to not fall in love with the first person who was nice to him. He could have more work and a steadier stream of clients — not that he needed the money, but having the extra work to do wouldn’t have been unwelcome. He had only broken up with Thomas maybe a decade beforehand and he was finally feeling like himself again. He wasn’t looking to start dating again, but he was thinking that a change of pace would be good for him. He never would sell the cottage, but he’d move out of it for a bit, just to be in a different setting for a while. Then he’d met Kenny, who had convinced him to stay in his cottage and simply reach out to his friends more often instead of holing himself away. He didn’t live that far outside of the podunk little town, so it’s not like they’d be inconvenienced by visiting him. Fucking on the roof under the moonlight had been a pretty convincing argument, too. Kenny had been right about his friends, of course, and he — 

_ Kenny _ . 

Craig scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide and wild, breathing heavily, one hand clutching his stomach at the sudden wave of nausea and the other grabbing his head. He’d been using the ouija that night to reach out to  _ anything _ that might know where  _ Kenny _ had gone. He’d vanished days before, gone without a trace, and that was so unlike him because Kenny was glued to his phone at all times. Craig had been crying as he used the ouija board to reach out to the nearest entity, anything at all at this point, he didn’t care, for some clue as to where his boyfriend of nearly a century had gone. 

That was why he’d felt so safe with Kenny, that was why he’d felt so in love with him so quickly, and — and — and — 

Craig’s head was spinning, and he turned around to bolt back toward the house, because if he remembered the keg stand Kenny had done at Tricia and Ike’s wedding then everyone else remembered him too and that must mean Kenny was back in his body and  _ he _ was Kenny’s lover, it was just that they couldn’t remember and — 

There he was.

Standing just beyond the treeline, six wings stretched visible and stretched out as he landed in the grass, orange hoodie vibrant as it had been the day he’d left. His golden hair —  _ god, how had he forgotten how golden his hair was? _ — falling about his face in gentle waves, his blue eyes shining so vibrantly, and his smile lighting up the forest for how far it stretched across his face. 

Craig ran.

He sprinted through the forest, dodging trees and leaping over shrubs until he burst forth from it like gunfire, his smile growing wider with every step he took until he was close enough to launch himself at Kenny, wrapping his legs around his waist and his arms around his neck as Kenny hefted him like he weighed nothing at all. Craig was laughing, or maybe he was crying, or maybe he was screaming. He couldn’t tell — specifics be damned, he just knew there was some sort of noise coming out of his mouth. Kenny’s strong arms were around his waist, holding him easily. There was noise in his ears, humming bordering on laughter, and it was Kenny fucking purring, how had he forgotten that sound that had put him to sleep so many nights? 

“It was always you,” Kenny murmured in his ear, nuzzling hard against his neck. “I spent a week and a half worrying about losing you to  _ you _ .”

Craig threaded his fingers into Kenny’s gorgeous golden locks and pressed their lips together in a kiss that was every bit as fiery as Craig hoped it would be, as he remembered that it was. Kenny’s skin was heat incarnate, all of the fire and none of the burn, and he worked his lips against Craig’s in well practiced, newly remembered movements that left him breathless. Their kisses were sloppy and angled awkwardly but Craig didn’t care, he didn’t ever want them to end, not for the next thousand years, or the millennia after that. 

“We lost our memories and we found each other anyway,” he murmured against his lips. Kenny’s hands scratched at his back, eager and warm. 

“Fuck the system,” Kenny said, chuckling warmly. Craig pulled back, laughing loudly, and then peppered kisses across Kenny’s face. “You opened the ouija conduit as Kerubiel was removing my soul from my body, and I saw it. The last conscious words I said were about your fine ass, and that’s what Mephistopheles heard when I beat his ass out of the way,” he said with a grin. 

“Even in the process of losing your memories, you still managed to make your way to me,” Craig hummed. “You ended up in my pantry, keeled over in front of the green beans.”

“In front of  _ your _ green beans,” Kenny said proudly. “I’ll always make my way back to you, even if I have to haunt you.” He nuzzled against Craig’s cheek, and Craig relished in the bloom of warmth there. “My soul’s always going to find you.”

Considering that even a vengeful angel from Heaven ripping Kenny’s soul from his body and fucking with his memories wasn’t enough to stop Kenny from finding him, Craig was inclined to agree. 

“My soul isn’t right until it’s next to yours.”

Grinning wildly, Craig felt his own soul sing in response. He didn’t think he’d ever been this happy to be haunted. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Could I have broken this down into two chapters? Absolutely. Was I going to? Perhaps. Am I getting weird vision from staring at the screen too long? Yes. Deal with this 26k disaster of a Halloween fic and just enjoy the Crenny ghost sex. Happy Halloween, y'all!


End file.
